


Kashmir

by kariye



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fisting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-04
Updated: 2012-05-04
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:20:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kariye/pseuds/kariye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malfunctioning Ancient device, alternate realities, you know the drill, and suddenly there’s another Colonel Sheppard on Atlantis. He looks like Rodney’s best friend – spars with Teyla and runs with Ronon, and to Rodney he says things like, “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kashmir

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from LJ.
> 
> I was seeking the particular thrill of antagonistic tension. So this is both buddy fic and not. Many thanks to pir8fancier and perverse_idyll for betaing and enabling. perverse_idyll had to look at this thing more times than was reasonable (which is kind of her own fault for staying up with me one happy night in March 2008 and hatching the basics of this fic with me), and it’s not their fault when I didn’t listen to their suggestions and went my own way. All remaining flaws are my own.

He shouldn’t want this the way he does.

He shouldn’t be standing beside his bed, naked, his cock rising high, moisture threatening to bead at its head. He shouldn’t take a step forward with his hands clenched into fists, legs trembling. He shouldn’t be able to smell himself, the musk of want, and the faint cling of pine sap that he can’t seem to get away from anymore. He shouldn’t rest his right hand on his thigh, slowly, or let it move of its own will inward, toward his cock. Shouldn’t feel as though he’s about to start thrusting into the air, just to move, or let his knees buckle to the bed so he can rut against the sheets, or better, between those spread thighs taunting him, waiting for him. He shouldn’t know what this kind of desperation is. 

But then, he shouldn’t have let those too-nimble, too-knowing fingers brush past him, slide his clothes off, slide him into the arousal that never quite goes away. Shouldn’t have let his eyes flicker down the long, lean body he didn’t know existed a month ago – not like this; shouldn’t have looked away from those eyes lazy with confidence, bright with — Shouldn’t have let him stroll past him into the room, shouldn’t have opened the door knowing who it was, shouldn’t have anticipated this would happen and craved it, shouldn’t have let it; shouldn’t have done this. 

Again. 

Because it’s John. And in the mornings, after, or in the late afternoon briefings, or at lunch, or at dinner, or in the hallways when they pass – because it’s always after, because it never stops happening, these few weeks an eternity – he can’t look Sheppard in the eye. 

“Pay attention, Doctor McKay,” John says from the bed. He curls a fist around his dick. The flushed head remains visible under his grip. His hand is still, and then not as he gives into his obvious desire to move, the familiar rhythmic motion, up, down, just once before he stops himself. He watches Rodney with impossible sloe-eyes, impossible because they’re green, hazel, changing, not dark at all, and yet here, here where they shouldn’t be at all, seeing things they shouldn’t see at all, John is sloe-eyed. They’re heavy, the way his ball sac feels in Rodney’s mouth. His voice is low.

Rodney would bend over and take the tip of his cock into his mouth, if he thought it’d be the end of this, at least until the next time. He’d do it because there’s an uncomfortable tingle under his tongue, the way saliva gathers in the glands of his mouth, and he has leaked liquid around John’s cock before, his lips unable to hold it all in, the yeast of John’s come, the water of Rodney’s mouth. He’s already halfway there. His dick juts a few inches away from John’s beckoning body; his hand hovers over John’s hip, ready to brace itself against warm skin. John makes a noise, indistinct, with a little roll of his hips, and Rodney swallows audibly. His entire body pulses, the drum and wash of his blood swelling, pushing him to do something, anything to get rid of this unbearable pressure in his chest, this want stronger, scarier than the tides of Atlantis’s oceans. 

“I—” he stutters.

John parts his lips. They glisten. The full bottom is plush, and Rodney knows the way it feels against his mouth. “Come on.” He spreads his legs apart.

“I can’t.” The words burst out of Rodney, unbidden, surprising even himself, desperately desired. He straightens and takes one step back. He takes another and another, and feels ridiculous with his cock bobbing out. It divines itself toward John, the way his entire body does. He fumbles backward to the wall and barely avoids falling over a stack of old physics magazines. When his hands hit the cool strength of the wall, he splays them there. It’s the only way he can keep from touching himself.

On the bed, John sighs and closes his eyes briefly. “You want to,” he says reasonably. Pleasantly. “I want to. There’s no problem here.” He gives himself one last pull and then slides his hands up his body: thigh, groin, belly button, abdomen, chest, mouth. He rises. 

“Oh god,” Rodney says. “Sheppard. It’s wrong. This isn’t – it’s not us.”

John smiles. “Why, McKay.” The word twines itself about his tongue, right where Rodney can see it. “I didn’t take you for a moralist.” The words twist and fall to the floor between them, and then so does John.

He’s on his hands and knees, and he slinks across the floor, crawling toward Rodney. The muscles shift and bunch in John’s shoulders, undulate down his back, and a painful wave of heat rushes over Rodney. His neck feels as though it can’t support his head as it thunks back to the wall behind him. He turns his face to the cool surface. He rests his cheek there to calm the violence threatening to break its way to his skin. He tries to close his eyes against John – undressed and on the floor, advancing on him, but it’s too late. The image is burned onto his retina, fired against the back of his eyelids. There’s nowhere for him to go even if he could make himself move again. Once nearly did him in, and now John is pursuing him, stalking him on hands and knees, and the dim light picks up the dusk of hair on his arms as they move, the tight clench of his ass. 

“Say it,” John demands, just as he reaches Rodney and lays his hands, long-fingered, over Rodney’s feet. His pinkie caresses the soft flesh between Rodney’s fourth and fifth toes, and then he palms his way up the thin bones on top of Rodney’s feet. He wraps his hands around Rodney’s ankles. His nail scritches lightly against the taut tendon there. 

Rodney feels it all the way up his leg. His cock twitches, and John looks up. His eyes laugh. He inhales slowly, letting Rodney hear him, and Rodney bites his lip. When he stretches up and blows cool air through pursed lips onto the slick head of Rodney’s cock, Rodney makes a loud sound – exhalation, groan, a stuttered word – and tries to cram his fist in his mouth to hold back anything else he might let loose. He can’t help it, not now, not with John at his feet with parted lips.

“Say it,” John tells him again. “Say my name.”

Rodney shakes his head frantically.

“No?” John pouts at him. “I’ll just have to convince you, then,” and just like that, the petulant expression disappears and John is looking up at him with the familiar wide-eyed expression, the one that says, “Hey, this is going to be fun,” just before the entire village starts shooting at them. The look Rodney’s seen Sheppard wear a thousand times over a gaming laptop, while watching a movie with the team, in the mess as he saves Rodney the last blue jello, in the infirmary as Keller says, “That was a little too close for my liking, Colonel,” and in the field when Rodney turns to him and says, “But wait! There’s an energy signature just ahead.” 

“Say my name,” he repeats as he leans back, away from Rodney’s cock, and Rodney can’t help but whimper. John’s on the floor now, on his back again, and he plants his feet on the wall on either side of Rodney’s knees. It locks him in, as if he weren’t already completely glued in place. John’s legs spread wide. Rodney can see everything if he tilts his neck, and he does. It’s uncomfortable, which is something he’s sure John knows and probably did on purpose, just to remind Rodney that Rodney’s an active participant here, that it’s not just John pushing him, that Rodney wants this, oh god, wants it so bad he’s going to come just from looking at John.

On the floor, John cants his hips up and pushes two fingers into himself. His eyelids flutter with pleasure. “I prepped myself for you,” he tells Rodney, “before I came. So you do this to me. Just like you want.”

Rodney’s fist drops from his mouth. He’s almost unaware of it. “I don’t.”

John moans and runs his tongue over his lips. Sweat glitters at his temples, caught in the silvering hair there. He adds a third finger. The palm of his hand presses into his balls, rolls over them. 

“You do,” he insists, and he’s right. Rodney hasn’t lied so blatantly since, well, since a few hours ago when he told Sheppard he would be working late in the lab all night and couldn’t meet him for dinner. How can it be his fault when John’s splayed on the floor in front of him, fucking himself on his fingers, and all Rodney can hear is his heartbeat, the obscene squish of lube, John’s ragged breath. 

John’s eyes fly open and lock on Rodney’s. “I want you to fuck me,” he says. His fingers keep working his body; his other hand jacks his cock. His body moves with a sexual beat. Rodney’s gone now, his hand mimicking John’s on his cock, fast and tight, too tight, not tight enough, not the hot welcome of John’s body, his ass, not enough and too much. Sweat flies from his body to John’s, their only point of contact.

John speaks a-rhythmically. His words are caught with his breath, with each inward push of his fingers. “Come on me,” he grits out, and it’s Rodney’s turn to fall to his knees. He knows they’ll scream at him later, just like his head, his mind, but right now none of that matters. Only this. 

“Do it,” John says again, “do it. On me. Say my name. I want you to know who you’re with.”

The brush of John’s leg hair tickles Rodney’s shoulders. Rodney flinches away – right now, even that will make him explode, and he wants to, all over John, and his hand works in short, sure strokes until he’s coming, spurting onto John’s groin, into the hair there, over his hand and cock, and the fattest glob begins to slide down, between John’s legs, against his fingers where they open his body.

“Say my name,” has become John’s refrain, low and unceasing, and somewhere, somewhere between the shocky pulse of Rodney’s release and the place where he falls back after, Rodney does.

“John.”

The word hangs between them and falls with its own inevitability, and John’s body contorts in orgasm. His ass clenches around his fingers and his back arches, and Rodney whispers, “John.”

+++

The call comes in the middle of the night. Of course. It’s a night where, if no one had called him, he’d actually have managed to get a full six hours of sleep.

“I enjoyed that movie,” Teyla says before the team breaks up for the evening. “It was quite amusing.”

Sheppard slouches further into the couch and stares at the dark TV screen. Ronon had picked up a sixty-inch plasma TV when he went to Earth, and Rodney still hasn’t figured out where he got the money. Maybe the SGC put him on its payroll. Now every time they have movie night Sheppard insists on doing it in Ronon’s room. 

“Here,” Rodney had said the first time they used it, and he'd handed Sheppard a tissue. “Control yourself.”

Sheppard had glanced over at him lazily. “Like you’re not drooling over it too.”

Rodney pffted. “Weak, Sheppard.” 

Sheppard had flipped him off. 

“Yeah, it was cool,” Ronon says, agreeing with Teyla. He takes the disc out. “Is there a sequel?”

Rodney and Sheppard exchange a look. “To Hot Fuzz? I’ve never heard of one.” 

“But all your Earth movies have sequels,” Teyla says. 

Rodney looks at Sheppard again. Sheppard arches his eyebrow. “Is she making fun of us?” He finishes off his beer. 

Teyla’s smile is just this side of sly. It kind of looks like her “trust us, we are harmless explorers” smile, which also can strikingly resemble her “this will not hurt at all” smile, the one she wears just before her sticks knock you on your ass. Not that Rodney gives her many opportunities to do that to him. 

Ronon stretches. “S'okay. They’ll make one.”

Teyla nods. “Rodney, you will get this for us.”

“Uh. It’s not actually that easy. You know, because it doesn’t exist?”

Teyla steps up and places her hand on his arm. “It is all right, Rodney. We trust you to do this.”

“But no pressure,” Sheppard tells him sweetly.

“Oh, come on. That’s completely unfair. Do you have any idea what it takes to get a movie made? I mean, you have to know people.”

“Time for bed, Rodney. Give Ronon back his room.”

“As if I was the one hogging the sofa.” 

Sheppard’s hand gives Rodney a little push along, out the door. He drops him off at his room. Rodney waves Teyla down the hallway. 

“O’nine hundred tomorrow, remember. PX8-496 awaits.”

“And I’m so excited, too,” Rodney grumbles as he opens his door. “They think fermented yak milk is the height of cuisine.”

He only works for an hour before collapsing into bed. Maybe he’s been asleep for three or four hours when the squawking from his headset on the stand next to the bed penetrates. “Ngh?” he mumbles into it, after he finds it blindly. 

“McKay,” says Sheppard. “You’d better get to the gateroom. You’ll want to see this.”

So he stumbles into some wrinkled pants and down to the gateroom where he finds a medical team – Keller’s hair is messy in its ponytail – and Colonel Carter and Teyla and Ronon and two teams of marines, guns at the ready. And Sheppard in the middle of all of them, hands up. 

“What’s going on?” Rodney begins to ask of someone, anyone. He glances around the gateroom for Chuck. He always knows more than anyone else and is always in the gateroom. No, really. Rodney once saw him in the mess, he thinks, about two years ago. It was a quick glimpse of the back of someone’s head, though, and it could have been Chuck but just as likely wasn’t. 

Feeling a person at his elbow, Rodney turns and feels his eyes pop wide. “Sheppard! You were over there.” He twists around to face the gate, where Sheppard still is, only now he’s eyeballing Rodney. “Wait, you’re still here. Too. You – he – are you you? Or is he you? Well, no, I can see you’re you. The guns are pointed at him. He must not be you.” Rodney makes an accusing noise at him. “What did you do? Can’t I even leave you to your own devices for a few hours?”

“I’m hurt,” Sheppard says. “What makes you think I did anything?”

There’s a sudden silence in the gateroom. After a beat, Carter clears her throat. “Obviously, we all have a lot of questions.”

“What, did you just let him in? Through the gate?” Rodney blinks at her. 

Sheppard steps forward. “He knocked.”

“Rodney.” Carter’s voice is firm. “He had Colonel Sheppard’s IDC. We had to know who it was.”

“But you don’t know who he is, that’s just the point. What’s if he’s not even Sheppard? He’s probably a Replicator.”

The Sheppard in the middle of the gateroom rolls his eyes. “Doctor McKay. It’s nice to see you, too,” and there’s a particular way Rodney’s name rolls off his tongue. It lingers, formal somehow, and sticky, anything but formal, intimate. “Would it help if I promised I wasn’t a Replicator?”

“Hah!” Rodney points. “That’s what they all say.”

“He’s going to have a full check-up.” Carter nods at Keller. “Every test we can run will be.”

Possibly-Sheppard shrugs, one-shouldered, just the way Sheppard always does. “I suppose I don’t get any say in this?”

“No,” Rodney and Sheppard say together. 

Carter purses her lips. “Sorry. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Ma’am.” He sounds resigned, but not upset. “Look, you’ll find this out yourselves, but the story’s pretty simple. Right address, wrong universe. Hasn’t this happened to you before?”

“Oh, sure, all the time,” Rodney tells him. Sheppard – the original one – murmurs, “McKay.” The other one stares at him, turns to himself, and says, “I think my universe is a lot like yours, actually.” 

Sheppard claps Rodney on the back. “That’s our McKay. Some things are a constant.” He watches the marines take himself from the gateroom. The med team follows. “I’m glad to see that you think I’m good enough to take out that many marines,” he says to Carter. 

She shakes her head with amused acknowledgement. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Rodney watches the gate a moment longer and then walks out of the gateroom with Sheppard. “So what do you think he’s like?” 

“Who, me?”

“No, him. If he’s from another universe, he’s probably not like you at all.”

“Yeah, remember Rod?”

Please,” says Rodney. “But hey. Maybe he’s like that Sheppard. A geek.” 

“Rodney.” Sheppard inches away from him. “Your eyes are gleaming. Besides, you called me a geek last week when I beat your minesweeper scores.”

“No, I didn’t. I called you a dork. There is a distinct difference there, Colonel, and if you were a geek, you’d know it.”

“Uh-huh.” Sheppard sounds skeptical. “I bet he’s cool.” 

“You would,” Rodney replies in the most withering tone he can muster. Sheppard just grins at him. 

“G’night, Rodney.” 

Back in his quarters, Rodney debates going back to bed. He has to be up in two hours, and he’s not sure if he could sleep now. He can’t wait to talk to the other Sheppard, find out if they have better weapons in their universe, if they’ve found a way to get rid of the Wraith or Replicators, what he – Rodney – is like over there, if they’ve discovered any plant in their Pegasus that tastes anything like coffee, because seriously, they could power Atlantis on that alone. Or at least the science department.

+++

In the morning Keller says, “We’re not quite done with all the tests we can run, but at this point it seems that Colonel Sheppard – that one – is who he claims to be.” 

“Thanks, Doc,” other-Sheppard says. He smiles at her. Rodney knows Sheppard’s smiles, all of them, and why doesn’t this one look any different? It should. It shouldn’t be the same, because maybe, maybe in other-Sheppard’s world Carson never even — Rodney stops. He can’t start thinking like this. He shoves the last of his pastry into his mouth.

Carter tells the marines they can step outside of the briefing room. Keller remains, as does the team and the other Sheppard. “Why don’t you tell us about where you’re from, Colonel. It is Colonel, yes?”

Sheppard nods. 

“And how you got here,” Rodney adds. 

Other-Sheppard’s gaze flicks over him, but he doesn’t say anything. To Carter, he says, “It’s a lot like here. We’ve still got the Wraith and the Replicators to deal with. You’re actually the most obvious difference I’ve seen so far. You’re not in command any longer. They, uh, they got Woolsey in.” He glances at her with a somewhat apologetic expression on his face. Sheppard doesn’t do sorry very well but it’s got to suck telling your CO that she’s been replaced.

“A few other faces that we don’t have around anymore. For different reasons. Maybe there are bigger things, but I haven’t seen them yet. We lost Carson almost three years ago. I assume Ronon and Teyla are on my team here since they’re both sitting in this meeting.” He jerks his head hello at them and falls silent. He doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else.

Rodney frowns at him and doesn’t think about Carson being dead for three years. “That’s really helpful,” he says, meaning anything but. “Maybe you could try being a little more specific. Because even something small that doesn’t mean anything to you could make a huge difference for us. Think about it, Colonel.” He twists in his chair to face Carter. “Just one minor modification to, say, the weapons systems could have huge ramifications. I’ll get Miko to make a spreadsheet of everything that we need to go over, and then Sheppard here” – he gestures vaguely – “can sit down with me and Zelenka.”

Beside him, Sheppard nudges his chair. “Easy, rider,” he says, just as Teyla intervenes, “Rodney, I believe it would be best to hear the Colonel out before we begin any projects.”

Other-Sheppard watches this with a blank expression. It’s a bit freaky, to tell the truth. Sheppard’s face is many things where Rodney is concerned, but rarely blank. 

“I assume you weren’t trying to get here.” Sheppard leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other. It’s exactly how other-Sheppard was sitting when Rodney came in. Rodney can’t stop looking back and forth between them. 

“No. You haven’t been to M56-3X2 yet, have you?” He glances around the table. “There’s an Ancient facility there. We didn’t know what it did. Doctor McKay was working on it when I ended up here. Somehow, I don’t think that was the original design of the machine.”

“What makes you say that?” Sheppard asks. 

“McKay was tinkering.” Other-Sheppard crosses his leg again. He and Sheppard mirror each other across the table. 

“Wait a second,” Rodney sputters. “I’m sure I didn’t mean to make this happen! If I even did do it at all, which I seriously doubt.”

“Relax, Rodney, no one said that.” Sheppard rolls his eyes. 

For the first time today, other-Sheppard speaks to him. “So you’re saying that you didn’t know what you were doing?”

“That seems fairly obvious, yes. And it wasn’t me.”

Other-Sheppard twirls a pen between his fingers, drawing Rodney’s attention to them. “Not so much of a genius after all, Doctor. Or maybe my McKay’s just a little slower on the uptake.” He looks at Rodney, suddenly.

Across the table, Sheppard stills, and then other-Sheppard’s lips quirk up. “Hey. I’m teasing you. Accidents happen. It’s complicated tech. You know that better than anyone, I’m sure.”

“Yes, well, it is,” Rodney says, only somewhat mollified. Sheppard’s eyes crinkle at the corners, and now there are two Sheppards smirking at him. This is clearly going to take some getting used to.

+++

When the marines come in again to escort other-Sheppard back to the infirmary for more tests, they stop and look back and forth between the two of them uncertainly. It probably doesn’t help that they’re both wearing Sheppard’s standard black BDUs and T-shirt.

“Oh great. He could take over the city and your men would all think it was you.” Rodney jabs a finger at Sheppard, as if it’s his fault. “Hello? He’s the one you’re looking for,” he snaps at the marines, gesturing at the other Sheppard just as other-Sheppard raises his hand and says, “I think you want me.” 

Once he’s gone, Ronon turns to Rodney. “I won’t let him get into trouble, McKay.”

Teyla shakes her head. “I do not believe he wishes to cause any problems. Most likely he desires to return home.”

Ronon shrugs. “Doesn't matter. He’s not Sheppard.” Rodney has to cover his surprised laugh at Sheppard’s expression with a cough. 

Teyla is unimpressed. “He does seem very similar to our Sheppard, though. Rodney is correct that we should try to find out whatever we can about his universe in order to see if they have made advances that we can use.”

“Take it easy.” Sheppard leans forward. “Listen, we don’t know what effect it might have on our universe to make decisions based off his universe. There are variables at work we can’t account for.”

Rodney’s already shaking his head. “Reality, actually, not universe. Sheppard, you’re mixing up alternate realities and timelines. If he were from the future, our future, then yes, we’d have to be careful that we didn’t do anything to compromise our timeline. But he’s not. He’s from another place entirely separate from us. Okay, it’s true that the same decision made in his reality could turn out completely differently in ours, but it wouldn’t be like messing up something that matters to our future, because it wouldn’t exist yet for us. We would just be making choices, the same as any other choices, only we’d have a different set of information off of which to base those choices.”

“Yeah, but we'd be diverging from our own timeline by acting on information from another universe.” 

Sheppard’s eyes are eager, the way Rodney knows his own must be. Sheppard’s not as smart as him because really, no one is, except maybe, just maybe, Colonel Carter sitting three seats away and watching the debate silently, but he’s pretty damn quick, certainly as fast as half the science department. He stifles the momentary irritation over Sheppard’s decision to join the Air Force and not get his Ph.D., but then, he can’t really imagine the man grounded.

Sheppard’s still speaking. “There’s a universe out there where we don’t do anything differently because another me shows up.”

“And there’s a reality where he doesn’t show up at all. Face it, Sheppard – we’re already acting differently because he’s here. So we might as well get any useful intel out him we can.”

“I didn’t say we shouldn’t.” Sheppard relaxes and props his boots on the table. Elizabeth used to hate that. Carter ignores it.

Rodney throws up his hands, exasperated. “Then why are we having this conversation?”

“Someone needed to point out possible risks.”

“And you’re the perfect candidate for that job, I suppose.”

“Gentlemen, enough.” Carter frowns at them. “These are valid concerns. I agree with Colonel Sheppard that we need to proceed cautiously, but we will proceed. We need to check out the planet with the Ancient facility that sent him here in the first place. We can verify his story and see if there’s a way to get him home. He can’t stay forever, and if he knows we’re trying to get him back to where he belongs, he might be more cooperative. Colonel, your team will check it out tomorrow after the other Sheppard has told us more about it. I don’t want to send you in blind and have this happen to one of you as well. Dismissed.”

On the way out, Sheppard says to Rodney, “I don’t actually think I’m being uncooperative. The other me.”

“Maybe. He seems a bit standoffish. Do you think – do you think that we don’t get along in his universe?”

Sheppard shoots him an incredulous look. 

“I know, it’s ridiculous.”

“Inconceivable.”

Rodney glares at him. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.” He’s probably imagining things, and even if he’s not, so what. That Sheppard’s not the Sheppard who counts. Not that it matters what Sheppard thinks of him. Or that, if it does, he’d ever admit it. 

“Aw, Rodney, do you want to be friends in his world, too?”

“Why, are you under the mistaken impression that we’re friends here?” Rodney says, and Sheppard laughs, just a little.

“Look, seriously, McKay. I don’t always—” He fishes for the right word.

“You don’t trust people.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Sheppard allows after a pause. “Even though you guys look like my team, to the other me, you’re not. He’s probably sorting things out.”

“Are you talking about how he feels? As in, how you’d feel?” Rodney can’t believe it. Which is when it occurs to him that this could be an excellent opportunity to find out more about Sheppard. On principle, since Sheppard’s pretty much the closest friend he has, which is slightly sad because the man thinks that Back to the Future is science. 

“So obviously the mission to PX8-496 for today is off,” Sheppard says, in a paltry attempt to change the subject. He stops in front of a door and it slides open. 

Rodney looks in. “Wait a second. Why are we at the armory? I thought we were going to my lab.”

Sheppard raises an eyebrow and says slowly, “Well, I don’t know about you, but this is where I’m supposed to be. Got munitions requisitions to sign off on.” He steps in and the door begins to close.

“You were leading me astray,” Rodney shouts just as the gap shuts in front of Sheppard’s face.

+++

“You,” Rodney says later. He walks into the infirmary. “I hear you’re done with all your tests.” He looks at Keller. “Is he good to go?”

“All clear,” she confirms. 

“Thanks, Doc.” Other-Sheppard rests his hip against a hospital bed. “Doctor McKay.” Each word seems somehow to be made into three liquid syllables instead of two hasty beats. Sheppard has a way of doing that, occasionally, as if Rodney and the rest of the city haven’t seen him burst into staccato motion, quick-time, double-quick, sharp enough to skewer a body on. 

“You’re not fooling anyone around here,” he says, and he’s talking about that languid sprawl against the bed. This is the way he needles Sheppard, but as soon as the words take shape on his lips, they sound all wrong. Out of place, hostile even.

Other-Sheppard’s expression doesn’t change. “Wasn’t trying to. Is there something I can help you with?” The words are polite. 

“Come on. Zelenka’s waiting for us. We need information from you.” Rodney’s halfway into the hallway when he realizes other-Sheppard isn’t following. He’s still leaning on the infirmary bed.

“Well? You don’t follow orders any better than our Sheppard does, do you? Ah.” He holds up his hand. “That was a rhetorical question, Colonel.”

Other-Sheppard cocks his head. “I wasn’t aware you had the authority to order me around.”

Rodney narrows his eyes. “Is there a reason you’re being difficult?”

“Pax, McKay.” He raises his hands. “I can’t just leave. If you’ll notice those two men standing by the door next to you? Colonel Carter hasn’t given them the order to let me out of here.”

It’s a perfectly logical reason. “Humph.” Rodney taps his radio and calls Carter. 

+++

M56-3X2 looks like any other place they’ve gated to. Trees and grasses stream by under the Jumper. “He said that it’s twenty klicks from the gate. I’m getting an energy reading from over there.”

“Was this planet on our list of sites to visit?” 

“It was probably going to come up in the next rotation or two,” Sheppard tells Teyla. “The database doesn’t indicate there’s much of interest here.”

“Which is probably Ancient code for ‘another major screw-up,’” gripes Rodney. 

“You weren’t at dinner last night, McKay.” Ronon’s observation comes out of nowhere. “Thought you would be, with him there.”

“I spent all afternoon with him going over this stuff.” Rodney fools with his scanner. “What do you think of him?”

Teyla glances at him. “I find the other Sheppard to be most remarkable.”

“Hey,” Sheppard protests. “He’s not that special.”

“No, that is exactly what I mean. He’s amazingly similar to you. I am sure that different past events have shaped him, although he has not spoken of them. Yet on the outside, at least, he is much more like you than, say, Rod was to Rodney.”

“Freaky.” Ronon nods. 

Teyla lays her hand on Sheppard’s shoulder. “Not that you are replaceable, John.” Her eyes crinkle at the corners.

“I’m not sure we’ve been talking to the same person,” Rodney says. 

Ronon pins him with a look. “What’d he do?”

“Nothing. Exactly. He just – he’s not the same. He says the same things, uses the same mannerisms, but he’s not. I can’t explain it.” It’s nothing other-Sheppard’s done, only the way he makes Rodney feel. Off, somehow. “Okay. Rod and I seemed different, but we were basically the same person. Maybe he was a little, I don’t know, more charming than I bother wasting time to be.”

Sheppard coughs. Rodney ignores him. 

“What if this Sheppard is the opposite? He seems like the one we know, but really he’s, he’s … not.” 

“Swell,” Sheppard says. “So I’m either a freaky clone or a freaky alien. No offense,” he says to Ronon and Teyla. 

Teyla smiles serenely. “None taken.”

Because, after all, it’s Sheppard and Rodney who are the aliens here.

+++

“Best I can figure out from a cursory examination is that it’s yet another Ascension device. Who knows if it ever worked correctly. The Ancients had a pretty bad track record with these things.”

“Can we take it back to Atlantis to study it there?” Sheppard asks.

Rodney shakes his head. “It’s connected to this whole structure. I think it’s supposed to function by transferring consciousness, basically analogous to the way the gate deconstructs, stores, and reconstructs an object that gets sent through it. Now the good thing is that no one’s tinkered with it yet, so maybe it will work the way it’s supposed to and we can get the other Sheppard home. The bad thing is that no one’s tinkered with it yet, and maybe he’s right. Maybe it was never meant to send someone to another reality, and that means that we have to replicate whatever they did on the other end, and who knows what that was.”

“No prob,” Ronon says. “You’ll just make the same mistake again you did in his universe.”

Rodney glares at him, and Ronon smiles back, teeth sharp. Teyla’s cough does nothing to hide her amusement.

As they walk out of the facility, Rodney smells the tang of pine sap from the forest around them. 

+++

Other-Sheppard’s waiting for them in the mess when they get back. “Find anything?”

“Only what you told us was there,” Sheppard tells him.

“I should have gone with you.” His shoulders are tensed in a way that betrays his pent-up energy. 

Rodney scoffs. “You’d just have done something stupid.”

“Rodney.” Teyla frowns at him. “Doctor McKay merely means that you sometimes have a tendency to act rashly, particularly when you are impatient.”

“I’m sure that’s what he meant.” Other-Sheppard glances at himself. “I don’t get impatient. Not like that. Do you, John?” 

“This is what I was talking about,” Rodney mutters under his breath. 

Sheppard stills, and then says blandly, “You’ll probably come with us the next time.”

“You didn't touch the third crystal, did you, McKay? I’m pretty sure that’s what started all this.” Other-Sheppard’s already told Rodney this and Rodney’s fairly certain he’s just saying it for the benefit of everyone else. 

Before he can answer, Sheppard does. “Don't worry, he didn't play with any of the crystals. He’s going to have to, though.”

Other-Sheppard grins, and it breaks the tension that only Rodney, and maybe Sheppard, seem to have been aware of. “The McKay in my universe isn’t always the best at listening to instructions when he’s got a new piece of tech under his hands.”

Sheppard makes a rueful face.

“Yeah,” Ronon says. 

+++

Things begin to fall into a recognizable pattern after that. Carter assigns their next two missions to other teams so that they can go back to M56-3X2 and continue work on the device that landed other-Sheppard here. Other-Sheppard begins running with Ronon and Sheppard, and training with Teyla. 

“I do this at home,” he tells them. “No point in stopping now.” 

The marines salute both Sheppards when they’re together. Rodney’s not sure if it’s merely because, after all, each one has the same rank, or if they just can’t tell them apart. It’s not very reassuring, not that Rodney seriously believes that the other Sheppard is going to do anything to harm the city. Because even if he always knows which one is which, he remembers the Wraith siege of the city a few years ago, the way they bombarded the shield with darts in a display more dazzling than the largest fireworks celebration Earth has to offer. Sheppard, exhausted and battered, had walked out, walked up, taken himself off to the highest point of Atlantis, right where the shield peaked. There's a widow’s walk there. It encircles the tallest spire, and Rodney had found Sheppard up there, stretching his hand out as if to touch the burning shield. 

“What are you doing?” he’d yelled at him as he grabbed Sheppard’s arm and pulled him back. At the time, he hadn't recognized the look Sheppard gave him, but afterward he did and maybe it’s the truest, most naked expression he’s ever seen on the man. It’s the look he sees on his scientists’ faces when they discover something new, so strange and fascinating that it would be unbelievable if found anywhere other than on this lost city. Probably it’s his own look, too. There has to be enough of Sheppard in the other Sheppard that this is still true of him. 

Sheppard says to Rodney, “It gets a little crowded up on the catwalks, three people running. You’d better be careful. We don’t want to mow you down.” His tone is light, but his eyes are somber. It's the way he sometimes gets when they're off-world and the villagers might turn hostile at any moment, and he knows it and wants Rodney to know it, too, but doesn't want to set the villagers off. This is Atlantis, though, and morning runs on the catwalks, and Rodney has no idea what he's talking about. It's not like he ever goes near them when they're running, and Sheppard knows it. 

It turns out that four out of five times, Sheppard can beat the other Sheppard in a race, by a hair, his footsteps falling faster when the other Sheppard is chasing after him, but that other-Sheppard always manages to knock Sheppard to the floor, eventually, when they spar. Rodney tries not to wonder why since no one else seems to. He doesn’t pay much attention to these matches, except if he happens to be passing by the workout room. He also tries not to do that too often, lest Teyla drag him in. 

But he’s standing in the doorway watching Sheppard and other-Sheppard stalk each other, dart in and out to the knock of the bantos rods when other-Sheppard glances up and meets his eyes. For a moment, Rodney’s frozen, only it’s the opposite of that. Time slows down and speeds up all at once. He’s aware of everything – the minute catch in his breathing, the faint hurry of his pulse, the almost imperceptible air currents brushed his way by the men on the mats. The sweat on other-Sheppard’s forehead picks up the light, and then the clash of the sticks brings Rodney back to the city, to this room. 

Teyla picks up a towel. “I find the noise soothing,” she says. “On Athos, we used a rhythmic tapping of the sticks against wood to summon our people.”

Rodney looks at her. “There are Earth cultures that do the same.” 

+++

Two days later, the afternoon is growing short on M56-3X2, and Rodney is alone with other-Sheppard, working on the device. The rest of the team is outside.

“Look,” Teyla exclaims when they arrive on M56-3X2 two days later. She examines the twining spindles of a shrub pressed against the wall of the facility. It has dark green leaves and small, scarlet berries. “I saw these last time but did not stop to examine them. Rodney was most impatient to get inside.” She throws him a small smile. “These are kunia berries. My people have long enjoyed them, although you must be careful not to eat too many, as they will make you ill.”

“Loazn,” Ronon nods. “People in the villages still used them as a medicine. To make you sweat out sickness. Didn’t use them in the cities, though.”

“How do you—” Rodney starts to say, but Sheppard’s elbow in his ribs cuts him off. Because, that’s right, there'd been that girl Melanie, or whatever her name was. This is probably the sort of thing Rodney should remember and might if he were a better teammate. Several times in the last few days he's walked into the mess and seen the other Sheppard sitting with Teyla and Ronon, and they've all looked at ease with one another. Rodney, well, of course Rodney gets along just fine with his team – they're his team, after all – but it was a little grating to see how easy other-Sheppard made it look, as if he can and did just walk into their lives like he's meant to be there. Rod had done the same, no matter what his team tried to tell Rodney later. It had taken Rodney much longer than a week to get as far.

Sheppard pops a berry into his mouth and screws up his face. “Wow. That’s,” he swallows, “tart,” and reaches for another one before heading inside.

There's nothing for the rest of them to do; it's Rodney's show. Well, Rodney and other-Sheppard's. Ronon sits with them, silent, for the first two hours. After he leaves, the Colonel pops his head in more times than necessary to check up on them, and Rodney waves him away impatiently. “I can’t deal with two of you watching over my shoulder. Fight it out between yourselves over who stays.” 

There's a long moment of quiet. Rodney resists the urge to look back at them to see what's going on. He doesn't, because really, there's no reason to think anything's going on other than a game of rock, paper, scissors. Then the other Sheppard says, “Maybe I can lend a hand with the device. Having seen another one like it,” and Sheppard says to Rodney, his voice sharper than it needs to be, “Radio check-in every fifteen minutes, McKay. I’m walking in here every half hour.”

Rodney snorts. “Bit excessive, don’t you think? Don’t worry, I have no intention of sending myself to another reality.”

The rest of his team hangs around outside picking berries, leaving Rodney bent over the device, alone with the other Sheppard. There’s a breeze, but no air moves inside. Even the dust is still. It makes Rodney glance over his shoulder to the long empty hallway, dark behind him. Sheppard hasn’t come by in about twenty-five minutes, although Rodney just informed him again that he's still present and accounted for. The other Sheppard doesn’t let him forget. Apparently it amuses him to keep reminding Rodney. “You do it,” Rodney tries telling him. Other-Sheppard chuckles. “I don’t think I’m the one he wants to hear from,” and that’s the last thing he says for a long time. 

Slowly, Rodney becomes aware of the silence between them, its weight, the shape of it, the way it fills up the corners of the room while the other Sheppard watches him work, steady, unblinking.

“I think they called this place Sulmeya.” He finally speaks just to break into the quiet. 

Other-Sheppard doesn’t respond. That’s not unlike Sheppard, only when Sheppard doesn’t say anything, Rodney doesn’t measure the silence after. He shies from the thought that other-Sheppard makes him uncomfortable, because it’s not that. It’s more that he’s aware of this Sheppard in a way he’s not of his own. He’s not sure why.

Some minutes later Rodney says, “I think I know what happened on your end before. It’s remarkably simple. Those two crystals should never have been crossed, although I don’t think anyone could have predicted it’d send you to a whole other reality. What I haven’t figured out yet is how to get you back to the place you came from, rather than any other universe.” 

“And I appreciate the work you’re doing, Doctor.” Other-Sheppard’s voice is calm, perfectly sincere, and if Rodney didn’t know John Sheppard as well as he does, he’d fall for it.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, even as he wonders why he’s starting this fight, why now, why at all, only he doesn’t think he is the one starting it. He thinks it started the day other-Sheppard walked through the gate and looked at him silently, weighing. The other man’s eyes have been following him ever since, and Rodney can’t escape the feeling of judgment in them. Or maybe, if he didn’t have to look at his friend’s face and sometimes see a stranger behind his expression, he might be less defensive, more likely to call it something else.

When other-Sheppard merely smirks, Rodney snaps, “Why do you keep calling me Doctor?” and other-Sheppard doesn’t pretend not to understand. 

“It’s your title, as you’re so fond of pointing out.” 

Rodney blinks. He hasn’t been title-obsessed in four years, not with those he knows at least. “Is your McKay still like that?” In Rodney’s world, only his minions and the marines call him “Doctor.” That’s the majority of the city, actually, but it doesn’t feel like it. Not the way it does when other-Sheppard says it. 

Other-Sheppard snorts. “Am I supposed to believe you’re not?”

“I—” Taken aback, Rodney can only stare at him, at his familiar face. Unexpectedly, it stymies him, where he’d verbally rip another person apart. 

“‘It’s remarkably simple.’” Other-Sheppard mimics Rodney’s words about the device. “Please, Doctor, have a little more faith in yourself. I was standing there with my hand on the machine because you told me to touch it. Nothing good could have come of the way you switched those crystals right then, and you knew it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” says Rodney, his voice rising uncomfortably with each word. 

The other Sheppard raises an eyebrow. He looks perfectly at ease, and Rodney finds himself wanting to hit him, to lay hands on him, to do something to shake him out of his smugness, to do something to make him feel like he’s been socked in the gut, the way Rodney feels right now. 

“I think you know exactly what I mean, Doctor McKay.”

“I – He – It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. And I’m not going to stand here and listen to your insinuations—”

Other-Sheppard smiles at him. “Oh, I’m not insinuating anything.” 

Rodney wants to curl over himself and wrap his arms around his belly. Maybe stumble into a corner and throw up, find Teyla and Ronon and Sheppard and shake this off, only he can’t do that. They don’t need to know this, because what if – impossible. He tries to pull himself up. “He couldn’t have known what would happen,” he says and wills his voice not to shake. 

“Maybe not. But you did it anyway.” The words hit the ground like heavy footsteps. Other-Sheppard’s so close that Rodney can see the green pine flecks in his changing eyes, catch the hint of dark forest that clings to him. 

“I don’t believe you,” Rodney says. “I don’t know what kind of relationship you two have, but I wouldn’t do that. Even if we didn’t get along, or you're jealous of my genius, or whatever.” He adds the last in an attempt to regain his normal footing, and feels himself still slipping. “I wouldn’t do it.”

The other Sheppard touches the back of his hand lightly. The move is so atypical that it burns the whorls of his fingertips into Rodney’s skin.

“Wouldn’t you? There isn’t some version of you that you can imagine doing such a thing?” His tone isn’t quite a statement. 

“It wasn’t me,” Rodney protests, and “I wouldn’t endanger the city that way,” and it doesn’t escape him that he hasn't really answered the other Sheppard’s challenge. 

“I think we’re done for today,” he snaps. Other-Sheppard falls back onto his heels in a crouch, knees open, oddly vulnerable in that position. 

Body language can lie. 

Rodney watches him out of the corner of his eye as he packs up his equipment. Other-Sheppard grabs the heaviest articles. “I insist,” he says, with Sheppard’s most winsome smile. 

On the way out, other-Sheppard breaks the silence. “I did forget to tell you something. About a week before I ended up here, we came across another ZPM. Not much juice left in it, but I know how you feel about them. 

Rodney nearly drops his case of tools. Right on other-Sheppard’s foot.

“You what? A Zed PM? You found another Zed PM, and in all the questions we’ve asked you, you managed to forget to mention this little tidbit. Of all the selfish, idiotic things to do. It’s not just our asses on the line here. Maybe you also managed to forget that as long as you’re stuck here, you’re at the same risk of attack as we are. Do you have any idea how much even a little more power would mean to us?”

It’s a stupid question. Of course he does. Rodney knows this before he asks. What he doesn’t know is why, but the sensation is growing – unhappily – that it has something to do with him, something personal.

Other-Sheppard leans a bit closer to Rodney. “Would it mean a lot to you, Doctor McKay?” and there it is again, those words made lush by his saliva-slicked lips. 

“To everyone. Don’t try to push this onto me alone.” Rodney turns and stomps out outside. The rest of his team is sitting in the shade near the building. They stand when he comes out, and Sheppard says, “Hey, Rodney, find anything new?” and Rodney pushes past him and says, “Don’t even talk to me.”

+++

Later, in Sam’s office, Sheppard sits low in his chair. His fingertips are stained red by the kunia berries, the loazn. “It wasn’t me,” he tells Rodney for the third time. 

Which Rodney is perfectly aware of, more so, it seems, than anyone else in the city so far. He’s even caught Carter glancing between the two Sheppards, reassuring herself which is which. Yet despite the fact that Rodney has no problem telling them apart, or perhaps because of it, he’s got to come up with a better way to differentiate them in his head than Sheppard and other-Sheppard. 

“I thought you knew,” the other Sheppard says to them all. “I would have told you sooner if I’d had any idea you didn’t have both ZPMs. I didn’t realize you hadn’t visited that planet yet.”

Carter looks at Sheppard. “We’ve been keeping him out of high-security areas. The gateroom, munitions, the ZPM core room, the jumper pads. Is it necessary?”

Sheppard’s eyes are shuttered. “Your call, Colonel. I’m probably a little biased here.” 

“I thought you knew,” the other Sheppard says again. 

Rodney glares at him. Other-Sheppard doesn’t so much as twitch. 

+++

There’s no good way to say, “I refuse to go back to the planet and spend all day alone with him.” Because that’s what Carter is proposing. The marines don’t count. Sheppard, his jaw tight, said he tried to change her mind and let the team continue to go with him. 

“Rodney, we have better uses for the rest of your team. And I can only give you until the end of the week to spend all your time on this. After that, I need you here at least some of the time. We’ll send a science team to continue work. Colonel Sheppard, even the other one, won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You’re missing the point,” Rodney says. 

“Then explain it to me.”

That’s the problem. How’s he supposed to explain that he’s pissed because other-Sheppard told them where to find a partially charged Zed PM? Vague tinglings at the base of his spine don’t count.

+++

 

The thing is that he thinks of Sheppard, this reality’s Sheppard, as “Sheppard.” This means that he really can’t call other-Sheppard that. But he also thinks of Sheppard as “Colonel,” or “Colonel Sheppard,” which means he’s likely to get confused if he tries to use “Colonel” on other-Sheppard.

Only, that leaves “John,” and there’s no way in any galaxy or reality that he’s calling other-Sheppard “John.” It’s too intimate. 

+++

On Thursday, Sheppard tells them to be back in four hours.

“What?” Rodney says, exasperated. “How am I supposed to get anything done in that time? That’s only about three hours of work time.” It’s one of those surreal moments where he’s aware of his mouth moving, words falling out, and yet all the while his brain is wondering why he’s protesting at all. Surely it’s not because he wants to spend time with the other Sheppard. Rather, it’s the opposite – he’s trying to get rid of him as fast as possible.

“We have jumper diagnostics to do, and we have to have them in air.”

“So get Zelenka. He works with them more anyway.” 

“Rodney.” 

The other Sheppard is standing at Rodney’s shoulder, a hair too close. When Rodney breathes, his arm brushes the black cloth covering his elbow. He glances at him, but for once the other Sheppard’s not looking back. His gaze is fixed on Sheppard, and maybe it’s just the angle, but it looks – not sly, but knowing. Which should make sense, at least in Sheppard’s case, since they’re as much the same person as they're not, only – only it’s not quite that.

“I could come, lend a hand,” other-Sheppard offers.

“Thanks,” Sheppard says. “I just need Rodney.”

+++

On Friday, other-Sheppard sits down on the floor next to him inside the facility. “Still licking your wounds, Doctor McKay?” His voice is casual. Rodney’s aware of every move he makes all day long, every time he shifts, every time he so much as goddamned blinks. There’s something to this Sheppard that Rodney can’t ignore, can’t get away from even when he wants nothing more. Other-Sheppard's lips are stained from the kunia berries he picked outside. Rodney tried one, once, after waiting a day to make sure the others didn’t keel over and die – because really, he’s not the lab rat here – and immediately spat it back out. 

“These look an awful lot like bittersweet,” he told his team. He looked at the Sheppards. “Common North American plant? Part of the nightshade family? Highly poisonous to humans, the entire plant?” That was a few days ago. Other-Sheppard’s still eating them. Rodney hopes he gets constipation, at least.

“Shut up,” Rodney tells him. “I have to get this done, and then this is my last day stuck here with you. You can spend all next week skulking around my scientists after I make sure this is as safe as possible for them.”

Other-Sheppard puts his hand on Rodney’s knee for a moment, and Rodney can’t breathe, and that’s before he says, “I take it your ego killed Dr. Collins on Duranda here, too.”

+++

Sheppard has a certain look that he wears when they’re off-world and he’s worried there will be problems. It’s a watchful look, usually accompanied by his hand on his P-90. 

In the city, Sheppard doesn’t walk around with his P-90, and he doesn’t always wear his thigh holster, either. But lately, Rodney’s seen something like that look he gets off-world, only now they’re at home. 

Sometimes he comes around a corner near his quarters and stumbles on the two Sheppards together. His Sheppard looks mildly tense, which, off-world, would mean that he’s either extremely pissed or scared, although not usually for himself because he can be an idiot that way. Sheppard says to Rodney, “He was just leaving,” and other-Sheppard salutes and backs away, not looking at all like he’s just been ordered to go. The opposite, rather. Like he just got something he wanted. 

“Colonel.” Rodney doesn’t know what he’s going to say. So he doesn’t, and after a minute, Sheppard rubs the back of his neck and says, “‘Night, McKay.”

+++

Rodney spends the next five days trying to make himself avoid other-Sheppard. It’s not a tactic he’s tried since third grade and Peter Jerkins. But he can’t ignore him, and there’s a recurring surprise at turning around, expecting his teammate, and finding someone who knows all the places he’s gone wrong.

It doesn’t work so well. Rodney always seems to find himself in other-Sheppard’s company, and maybe some of the time it’s his own fault.

“I understand,” other-Sheppard says. “Griffin was a fool. Incapable of even appreciating science, much less understanding it. His life obviously had so much less value than yours. He was only doing the right thing in sacrificing himself for you down in that jumper.” 

If Rodney were the type of person to reflect on himself, it might make him wonder what sort of asshole he is in other-Sheppard’s world. If there's some reason for other-Sheppard to hate him. He'd want to pin it all on other-Sheppard but wouldn’t quite be able to. Because he knows himself just a little too well, knows what he was in Siberia, what he could have become.

But he doesn’t think about these things. One of his therapists once told him that he only avoids things because he cares so much about them, but then, this is another thing that Rodney doesn’t like to think about. Besides, other-Sheppard does it for him. “You’re bitter,” he says of the Rodney in his universe. He relaxes his arm on the empty chair next to his in the mess. “Some people respect you. The ones who weren’t there in the first year somewhat more than the old-timers.”

And that’s the opposite of what Rodney expected. Here, the longer people stay on Atlantis, the tighter the community becomes. Sheppard’s eyes are bright with something Rodney isn’t sure how to label. Or doesn’t want to. “They heard how you broke under Kolya’s knife. A few shallow gashes, McKay. They saw the way that personal shield clung to you until you were too hungry to keep it there. They saw the way Ford almost died getting rid of that energy creature. They remember Dumais and Hays, Johnson and Wager, how for all your vaunted brains, you didn’t save them. They remember Gall and Abrams, who didn’t come back, for whose deaths we have only your account.” 

Rodney wants to protest that it wasn’t him who did those things, that it was some other Rodney, but the truth is that he did do them. Except for the part about the energy creature – that was him, that was all him. Because he doesn’t understand this. Not the things that the other Sheppard’s accusing him of – oh, he understands them all too well – but how other-Sheppard knows exactly where to hurl his acid. And why. The litany of his supposed crimes blisters his skin, and under, too. 

So, finally, instead of denying other-Sheppard’s words – because as much as he wants to, he can’t; as much as he wants to call him on the lies, to say that that wasn’t the way it fell out, he can’t; because isn’t he just a little bit right; don’t those deaths lie heavy on Rodney’s conscience, all the things he should have done, all the things he didn’t do? So instead of denying the words that cut his skin with every letter, he tries to fight back. “Like you and Sumner, you mean. For whose death we have only your account,” and other-Sheppard’s lips actually curve up at that, sweet with malice and something that looks scarily like approval. 

Rodney can taste the bile of his words on his tongue. It coats his mouth, bitter and chalky. He walks out of there with vinegar in his belly, and when he gets back to his room that night, he doesn’t look in the mirror. He knows that frequently he says things that are biting, sarcastic, even cruel, but they’re usually not deliberate and meant only to draw blood. 

Not that it seemed to hurt the other Sheppard anyway. 

+++

Teyla catches up to him one day as he’s taking his dinner back to the labs. “Rodney,” she says as she lays her hand on his arm. “You did not join the team for supper today. Nor yesterday. Is everything all right?”

“Mmhmm.” He’s got a mouth full of biscuit, thankfully. “Just busy, new projects, no time to waste.”

“We have seen less of you since the other Colonel Sheppard has joined us. And you seem more” – she considers him – “harried of late.”

“Well, of course,” he exclaims with his best “duh” face. “Because now on top of everything else, I’m supposed to find a way to get rid of him. As if I have time for all this.”

“I find your phrasing peculiar,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Is there something we should be aware of?”

Rodney makes sure he doesn’t look away from her. She’d find that even more “peculiar.” He doesn’t want to have to explain to her how sometimes other-Sheppard says the things that Rodney's been trying all along not to think about himself. He hates the way the other man seems to know him, and yet - and yet there's something about it. About hearing those things said out loud in Sheppard's voice. That anybody, but above all Sheppard, should know him at his worst.

“No. I just – you know what I mean. I have to get him home somehow.”

“Yes,” she says. “Perhaps he is more different from our Colonel than I first realized. I do not know if John understands this,” and Rodney’s willing to bet he doesn’t because he himself doesn’t know what she means. 

+++

“You don’t want to mess with me,” Rodney tells him. He continues typing with one hand. The other pages through the stack of reports he’s yet to get to. “I control this city. Your temperature controls, your water supply, the doors you walk through.” 

Rodney spends too much time with the other Sheppard.

Other-Sheppard leans over his shoulder, too close. He’s just come back from the Ancient facility where he’s been working with Zelenka on the device that sent him here, and he smells like pine resin. He always does. Yesterday on the mission to P94-3Q5, Rodney found himself looking around for him when he caught the same scent. But there was only Sheppard next to him. 

“Is that the best you can do?” other-Sheppard says into his ear. “You tried that five months into the expedition in my Atlantis.” He pops a scarlet berry into his mouth. 

Rodney twists around. “What do you want from me?” As soon as he asks, he regrets it. 

Other-Sheppard settles back. “Just to be yourself.” He doesn’t blink, and so Rodney can’t either. There’s a pause caught in the interstices. 

Sheppard – the one Rodney’s always known – pops his head around the corner. “You eat yet? Come on, you need to take a break.” 

Other-Sheppard rises to his feet smoothly. “I’ll tag along with you guys, if that’s okay with you, John. I haven’t had dinner yet, either.”

Sheppard’s face betrays no reaction, but Rodney knows better. Sheppard’s not enthusiastic about this. It gives Rodney pause. If he knows better, then surely the other Sheppard does as well, and if that’s true, maybe no one’s fooling anyone here. The only thing is that Rodney has no idea what they’re all fooling each other about. 

They all end up at a table together. Rodney eats as quickly as he can shove food down this throat, bent on escape. He’s not ready to be sandwiched between them, and if he’s at all aware of it, then he can’t be the only one. Maybe Teyla’s comment the other day had something to do with this.

Other-Sheppard watches him with dark eyes while they eat. Rodney ignores it, and Sheppard’s broody face as well. 

+++

As far as he can tell, other-Sheppard and the McKay in his reality seem to have some crazy sort of competition going on between them. Only in that other reality they don’t call it a competition because that would imply it’s some sort of lighthearted game. It’s not. If, years ago, it even started out that way. It’s the only response he can find to the other Sheppard, the only way he can think of beating him because ignoring him isn’t working. He suspects that's how the other McKay feels, too.

Although Rodney doesn’t trust other-Sheppard to tell the truth about how he ended up here, not the whole truth, Rodney can’t bring himself to believe that there’s any universe where he’s enough of a moron to have accidentally caused the screw-up that made the other Sheppard an outcast from his reality. He gets a perverse pleasure in other-Sheppard’s acknowledgement of this, yes, even if it means that he – the other he – acted deliberately. 

Other-Sheppard watches him knowingly. “Yes, it’s true. The great Rodney McKay doesn’t make mistakes like that in any universe. Duranda aside, of course. I actually think you’d rather have done it on purpose, even with what that says about you.” 

Rodney doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to. They both know who’s right. It’s a secret between them, yoking them together, this knowledge, because everyone else thinks he made a mistake. 

“Why do you call him John?” Rodney says later.

Other-Sheppard raises his brow. “It’s what I call myself?”

There’s something really wrong with that. It’s wrong in the same way that Rodney can’t stay away from the other Sheppard, sometimes doesn’t even want to, sometimes relishes the constant cut of someone who knows the worst he can be and doesn’t flinch. 

+++

“Everything all right, McKay? You’ve been acting a bit jumpy lately. More than usual.”

Rodney wants to laugh and throw the question back at Sheppard. He almost does, only here, in the middle of the lab surrounded by scientists, it would be cruel to do so. The Colonel doesn’t talk about these things. Rodney’s not sure why – it’d better not have anything to do with the other Sheppard’s presence – but he’s more aware of stuff like that lately. His actions, his words, their effects, all the things he’s spent years not thinking about, all the things that other-Sheppard delights in throwing in his face. He wants to hate him for it, for forcing him to look at himself, only he can’t. Not quite. It’s like hating his best friend. 

It’s funny how the same mouth can shape the same word so differently. Rodney will always know that this is Sheppard, not other-Sheppard, when he says his name. Sheppard’s sought him out in the lab, the way he does sometimes when they don’t have a mission and he’s tired of the paperwork he has to fill out as CO of this base. The way he just sometimes does and Rodney’s always taken for granted. When he comes in, Rodney is at the whiteboard, marker uncapped in his hand. 

“Hey,” Sheppard says after Rodney’s ignored him for a while, and he points. “I think you missed something there.”

“Ridiculous,” Rodney snaps at him. “Don’t be contrary, John. This isn’t some easy-peasy college-level calculation. It has a delicate internal balance, and you can’t just come in here clomping all over it with those military-issue boots of yours. If you’re going to continue making asinine remarks, they can just march you right out of here.” 

He’s trying too hard, he knows. Trying to make it sound like he’s not looking at Sheppard’s – John’s – lips to see if there’s something he never noticed about them before. Or at the graceful strength of his hands. Yesterday, Rodney stared at other-Sheppard’s hands and thought about the piano, as he so rarely lets himself do. He thought that those hands were more suited to the piano than his own, more apt to span the white keys and stretch for the black. They look like that, at least, even if it’s a lie, and for that Rodney hated him just a little. 

But Sheppard today is the same Sheppard – John – he saw yesterday, who’s the same as a few weeks ago, before there were two of him. The same man Rodney’s always seen and never noticed, not like that, not with anything more than an intellectual knowledge that yes, he’s the sort people find good-looking. There’s never been anything sultry about him before, not aimed at Rodney, and maybe that’s the difference. Sheppard’s charm, his, god, his sexual appeal, can be lethal, but it’s never been a weapon aimed at Rodney himself. 

Sheppard’s eyebrows shoot up. “‘John?’” he echoes. 

Rodney tries to look unconcerned. “It’s your name. Easiest way to distinguish you from the other Sheppard.”

“Right,” Sheppard says, and looks back at the whiteboard. “That is your equation in question, isn’t it?” 

“Of course it’s my equation. Do you think one of these idiots could come up with something like this?” He waves around the room. The marker traces an invisible line through the air. 

“No, Rodney, I don’t.” 

Rodney draws himself up. “Although,” he says sententiously, “if it were the work of one of my underlings, your aspersions would be just as offensive.” He raises his chin. The lab goes quiet as everyone turns to stare at him. “What,” he says. “It would be.” He pauses. “Possibly. Under some circumstances. Such as in another universe.” Although if the other Sheppard is right, if what Rodney turns from as he drifts in the twilight between sleep and waking late at night is true, then he knows that in at least one other universe, he really wouldn’t care.

Sheppard cants his hip to the right. The other Sheppard does that. It looks completely different on him, sly and enticing. On Sheppard, John, it just looks normal. “Uh-huh.”

“Your support is touching,” Radek, who’s not even pretending not to listen, says to Rodney. Rodney makes a noise at him before turning back to the whiteboard. 

“Fifth part,” Sheppard puts in helpfully. 

“Fine.” Rodney caps the marker with a distinct click. “Why don’t you enlighten us, John.” Again, the words feel off, as though he’s reaching out for something familiar and ending up stretched too far. 

“It feels wrong.” 

“It feels wrong.” Rodney’s voice gets higher, because it’s supposed to, because that’s how they play this game, and between Rodney and the Sheppard he knows, it is a game. “That is so helpful. Only not. You are— oh.” He looks down at his laptop and types furiously, and then scribbles on the board as fast as his hands will let him. “Oh.” 

“See? Feels wrong.” Sheppard’s smug now, and a little relieved, as if he was nervous too, and Rodney flaps his hand at him and rushes back to his laptop muttering half-sentences like “shut up” and “feels wrong” and “wrong variable” and “stupid Riemann Hypothesis” and “feels wrong,” and “yes!” and somewhere along the way, he forgets that he had to try too hard to talk to Sheppard – John – the way he always does, that it’s unnatural to call him John. For just a minute, when John grins at him, uncomplicated, it’s like the last few weeks never happened; like he never looked at other-Sheppard and understood in his gut and at the base of his spine how attractive the man is. Because here, now – sure, he knows that John is good-looking, but he doesn’t understand it and doesn’t want to. 

He’s just Sheppard.

+++

The next time Rodney goes to work on the Ancient device that sent the other Sheppard here, the first thing that hits him when they lower the jumper door is the intense smell of pine. A whole balsam forest assaults him, and then he realizes that he never got away from it, that other-Sheppard’s been sitting next to him all the way here, that he smelled it in Atlantis, in the halls and his lab and his room, where he shouldn’t. 

The grass is wet with recent rain. Logically, that’s what’s making the scent so strong, stronger than usual. There’s a low fog clinging to the ground, like freshly cut sap. 

Sometimes, Rodney is discovering, knowing something logically doesn’t mean that’s the explanation you actually believe. Because he blames things he shouldn’t even be seeing and never used to see on the sharp scent all around him: the sideways slant of other-Sheppard’s hips, the lowered zip at the top of his shirt, the flash of bare skin there, the inward-outward suck of his belly. 

It’s unacceptable, this. No one’s allowed to turn logic on its head, to show him impossible things. He holds other-Sheppard accountable. Maybe in that moment, he begins to hate him a little.

The kunia berries – bittersweet, Rodney can’t help but call them, nightshade – twine up the side of the facility. He vaguely hears other-Sheppard tell the marines to stay outside and keep watch, but isn’t really paying attention by that point. He views the Ancient device with no small measure of relief as soon as he catches sight of it. Not because he thinks he’s going to fix it today and get rid of other-Sheppard, but because if only he can get to work on it, maybe he can lose himself in that, in his work, in his mind and the tech, and forget who’s waiting patiently just behind him. 

Two hours later, he hasn’t managed to forget. Every time he almost does, other-Sheppard shifts just a little, a faint rustle of fabric. His eyes have been building a slow, steady pressure against the flat of Rodney’s back. In self-defense, Rodney keeps up a steady monologue about the device, about the probabilities involved in calculating which universe belongs to other-Sheppard, about the improbabilities of finding that one again because every second of every day that other-Sheppard is away from it, it becomes a whole new universe in a cosmos of exponentially forming universes.

About how it would serve him right if Rodney just sent him somewhere, anywhere, except that he thinks it might just piss off his own Sheppard more than he has the energy to deal with after three weeks of the other Sheppard. But that he doesn't have to tell, no one has to know: they'd still have their own John Sheppard, the real Sheppard, to protect them so it's not like he'd be hurting Atlantis, not in this reality, his city, ("not like some Rodney McKays," the other Sheppard murmurs, and this actually halts Rodney in his diatribe because he knows that other-Sheppard views him as he does the other McKay and wow, talk about sotto voce sarcasm).

Rodney says all this casually, as though he hasn’t been thinking about it for a week, the way two days ago he said, “I really don’t like you,” which made other-Sheppard laugh. 

“Oh, I think we can do better than that, Doctor McKay,” he’d said, and, “I don’t like you either,” mockingly. “But I do know you. Your Sheppard, he doesn’t understand the way I do.”

Later, Rodney will find out that this is a lie. But right here, right now, he talks about the humidity being bad for the alloy in the casing of the device; about how the environmental controls wavered actually not so long ago, in the scheme of ten thousand years; about how the Ancients were cheaters of the worst kind to try to fling themselves into Ascension without all the hard work of, well, whatever it takes to ascend. 

He talks until his throat is dry, and then finds other-Sheppard crouched next to him on the floor where he’s kneeling to peer into the device’s guts. “Here,” he says, handing him a canteen. 

“I have my own,” Rodney tells him. “What’s the deal?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” says other-Sheppard. The curve of the right side of his mouth catches the lie.

“You’re not just going to give me your water because you want to help me.”

“Jeez, Rodney, I’m just looking out for my teammate,” and for a second, he sounds so much like Sheppard that Rodney almost reaches for the water. But then he says, in his normal tones that sound everything like Sheppard and nothing, nothing like him at all, “Besides, you’re my ticket out of here. Got to keep you in top condition.” His voice is somehow denser, less likely to let Rodney go. He inflects words the way the wormhole does space. 

Rodney rolls his eyes and snatches the canteen. “Give me that, John.” He means it as a parody of the other Sheppard’s use of his own name, as something that mocks. Only that’s not what happens, is it. Because things don’t happen the way they’re supposed to around other-Sheppard. John. It fits him, an uncomfortable burr tagged onto Rodney’s skin, too intimate and too close. “John” is everything he shouldn’t be, and naturally, is. 

John is watching him, still on his knees.

“Stop it,” Rodney says irritably. 

“Stand up,” and god help him, he does. When he tries to take a step backward because he’s too close, John’s hand curls around the back of his calf. 

“What?” Rodney stammers.

John’s breath huffs out, and he chases it forward, forward until his face rests in the crook of Rodney’s thigh.

Rodney yelps. “Holy shit. What are you doing?” He tries to bat John’s head away, tries to step back, but he’s caught and he runs into the device six inches behind him. His hands fly up and brace himself backward on it to keep himself from tumbling over. Because he is tumbling, freewheeling, out of control. John’s shifted his reality, again, and his mouth parts against Rodney's cock, cloth-covered and only mostly soft because there is, after all, something in Rodney that responds to John’s single-minded fixation on him, the way he’s brutal and unfettered. He gives back as good as he gets, exhilarating. 

Rodney wills his dick to stay soft, mostly soft, please, stay that way, only it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t, and if he were thinking more clearly, he wouldn’t even blame himself – doesn’t, later. He’d have to be blind not to see how hot this is, John Sheppard kneeling at his feet, his hands sliding up to curve into Rodney’s ass, his mouth open and seeking. And maybe he was blind, because he didn’t see this, not at all, before. Four years, and he never once thought of it. 

That doesn’t make it right, though. In fact, it makes it very, very wrong. 

“Oh god,” he says when John yanks down the zipper on his pants and takes his y-fronts with it. His cock, half-hard, looks obscene above the blue fabric. 

John licks his lips and glances up at him. 

“Oh god,” he says again. His hands are clammy against the cool metal of the device, and the humid, pine-scented air becomes difficult to draw in. This isn’t happening, it’s not. John’s lips, full, close around the head of his cock. 

“Don’t.” 

He tries once more, with failing will. He can’t do this with this man, with someone who for all intents and purposes, hates him. Someone who looks like his best friend. Someone who is his best friend, only the fucked-up version. There’s also some distant part of his brain trying to warn him that this is a really bad idea. Because, all other things aside, it’s never a good idea to have any kind of sex while pressed up against a malfunctioning alien device that’s capable of stealing you from your reality, from your own space and time, especially not while four bored marines are sitting twenty feet away just waiting for a noise to investigate. 

John licks a path down the underside of his cock, and Rodney imagines that every place John mouths will end up stained scarlet from the bittersweet. His hot cheek brushes past Rodney’s skin, and Rodney whimpers. 

“Don’t worry, Doctor McKay. I won’t do anything you don’t like.”

+++

When they get back to Atlantis, Sheppard is waiting. He steps into the jumper and grabs one of Rodney’s sets of tools. His hand touches Rodney’s briefly, accidentally. 

Rodney flinches. If John sees, he'll twist it the way he does everything.

Rodney keeps his face averted as it burns, and manages to get away from Sheppard without once meeting his eyes lest he read the truth, whatever that is, in them. He can smell sex on himself and his body pales and flushes fiercely, his blood sucking out to sea in a wave and then crashing back in stronger. As he walks down the hallway, he hears Sheppard ask John, “What’d you do to him?”

His voice is unreadable. 

John makes an amused noise and says something back. The white noise of guilt filling Rodney’s ears keeps him from catching the words. 

+++

It’s not going to happen again. And he doesn’t want to call him John. 

Rodney makes one more attempt to call Sheppard “John,” because if he has to call someone that, he’d rather it be his friend. That’s common, right? Friends call each other by their first names. Yet when he says it the next day, it just makes things worse.

As they wrap up their pre-mission briefing and everyone else leaves, Sheppard turns to him. Rodney doesn’t want to hear what he’s going to say.

Rodney keeps tapping at the keys on his laptop. “Are you hungry?” he says. Anything to preempt Sheppard.

“Uh, no.”

“Good. Bring me back some food.”

“I actually do have work to do, McKay.” 

“And mine’s more important. Try to snag two desserts, John.”

He nearly chokes over the word. The instant he says it, he thinks of how John, the other Sheppard, slipped into the transporter behind him on his way to the briefing an hour ago. The door slid shut and Rodney turned to push the screen to take him to the briefing room. John stood behind him, so close that his breath was warm on the back of Rodney’s neck, so close that his arm encircled Rodney as he reached forward to give Atlantis his own destination, so close that Rodney felt the outline of his body, every inch of it hard, against his own.

“See?” he murmured. “You make me want you.” 

Rodney swallowed. “Oh, please.” The words were acid. “You probably sat in your room masturbating just so you could come out here and harass me.” 

Because he hasn’t figured out why John blew him, but he knows it’s not from some passionate desire for him. Unless – “Do you and he do this? The other me, the one from your universe? Are you doing this because I’m not him? Do you hate me because I’m not him? Even though honestly I don’t think he sounds like such a prize.”

At that, John laughs so hard that it turns into his rare, ugly har-har. He staggers back from Rodney and leans against the wall of the transporter. The doors stay shut. “Doctor McKay,” he says, “you are him. You just don’t know it yet.” He sobers and studies Rodney. “The McKay I know would have sent me home by now. Or sent me somewhere. I know you've already had that idea. You’re stalling.”

“And you’re an ass.”

John waves this away. “I think,” he says, “that you don’t want to send me back just yet.”

“Do you do this with him?” Rodney demands. 

“Fuck with him?” John raises an eyebrow. “Yes. Fuck him? No.”

Somehow, Rodney is sure that his other self gives back every bit as good as he gets. Anyway, it's a lie. He does want to send John back. 

This is why it’s too late to think of Sheppard as John. Because John hates him, and despite what he claims about it being because of all the things that Rodney hasn’t been able to do or has done wrong in the last several years, Rodney’s certain he’s lying. That it’s far more personal than that. The swallow of his throat around Rodney’s cock, the dribble of come leaking from the corner of his mouth – these things aren’t impersonal. 

So John, for whatever reason, John hates him And Rodney’s going to do his damnedest to make sure that Sheppard doesn’t ever have cause to as well. 

+++

After thinking about it for three days, after three days of John’s pine-sharp presence everywhere – Rodney suspects he sneaks into his room during the day and sits there just so that Rodney will smell him when he returns at night – Rodney decides that it’s entirely unfair that John was the one on his knees and still completely in control.

It’s late. He’s had it with the project he’s been working on all day. Somehow when he leaves the lab, his feet just keep walking, past his door, down the hallway and to the left, to John’s room.

The door opens easily for him. John’s there. He looks as if he’s been waiting for Rodney, and Rodney, who hasn’t been thinking anything or at least trying his hardest not to, just keeps walking in without pause until he’s fisting his hands in John’s shirt and yanking him up. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, only that he’s not going to lose this round. It’s the same way that he doesn’t know when he entered into the same competition that John has with his own Rodney; he doesn’t want to be in it, but somehow he feels helpless, caught by his own desires. 

Only John comes willingly. His legs part. “Gonna fuck me, Doctor McKay?” His voice is low. He looks at Rodney from shuttered eyes.

It might have been Rodney’s plan, if he’d had one. But now he can’t do it because John suggested it and clearly would be happy with it. Instead, he tells John to strip, and watches him, each article of clothing being tossed carelessly to the floor, and he has a moment of shock, panic, when he sees John’s body and realizes that this is Sheppard’s body, something he shouldn’t be seeing.

He can’t stop now, though, can’t lose control of this. Next time – there won’t be a next time. He won’t need a next time, and so it’s just this once that he’s going to see this body, know this body, and then he’ll forget all about it. 

John trails a lazy hand down his chest. Rodney takes off his own clothes and steps forward between John's thighs. His cock fits there perfectly, and John closes his legs around it while Rodney, slippery with lube, fucks him face-forward between his thighs. A hectic flush suffuses John’s cheeks and spreads down his chest. His cock knocks between them, and Rodney’s cock presses past his balls. The hair on his upper legs is very fine, a faint caress against sensitive skin. 

It should look ridiculous, the strange stillness of John’s body held at Rodney’s pleasure, the bounce of his cock, the rise and fall of his chest.

John makes a sound deep in his throat. 

When Rodney comes, he has to bite back the gasp that threatens to spill out from his lips, carrying a dangerous name. He bites down so hard that he knows his lip will be swollen, later, and watches the milky liquid drip down John’s legs. John’s cock is thick and colored with need, and he closes the short distance between their lips and licks his own name from Rodney’s mouth.

Rodney shudders. He feels John’s smile against his lips, triumphant and victorious despite the hardness of his cock, the splash of semen on his body, and the way he falls to the bed behind him when Rodney shoves him away. 

+++

People who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders are foolish. That’s why Rodney doesn’t. He prefers his guilt to center on one or two discrete things; he refuses to let John create a cascade tumbling over his head. In fact, really, John’s doing him a favor, not that he's trying to. The perverse relief that he felt from John’s cutting words is magnified now with this new, horrible thing he’s done. Sex never should have come into it, but it did, and Rodney doesn’t know how to go back. John’s seduced him with knowledge, with the way he sees him for who he sometimes fears himself to be, imperfect, bound to fail, to let his friends down, to betray even the best of them. 

Because he can’t stop betraying Sheppard – every glance he takes at John is another stab in the back. 

“Concupiscence,” John whispers in his ear, and Rodney’s cock twitches.

On the next mission, Teyla waits until Sheppard’s too far ahead to hear a quiet voice, and then she says, “Rodney, do you remember our conversation from two weeks ago? I am becoming even more concerned. You do not seem to be yourself lately, and John is looking tired.”

Rodney has a moment of confusion where he’s not sure who she’s talking about, before he realizes that she means Sheppard. 

“Nope,” Ronon says. “I told you. I think he’s jealous of the other Sheppard.”

“I’m not!” Rodney protests.

Ronon rolls his eyes. “Not you, McKay. Sheppard.”

“You are mistaken, Ronon. Why would John envy himself?” They sound like they’ve had this conversation before. 

“The other Sheppard doesn’t think about things the same way. He’s less involved,” says Ronon, which makes no sense to Rodney because, yes, it’s oh-so-true that John doesn’t think about things the way Sheppard does, but if anything, John is more involved. Sheppard always holds himself apart, at a distance – from Rodney – and Rodney didn’t even see it until John came along. John is right there, in his face, showing Rodney everything that he should have seen, that could have been. Suddenly he has no idea why it wasn’t already like this between him and Sheppard, only better because he actually likes Sheppard. Even if, now that he’s aware, he hates that Sheppard hasn’t been giving him this. 

Rodney ignores the rational part of his brain, the part that hasn’t been influenced by John’s presence, the part that reminds him that he has no right to demand it.

+++

He doesn’t seek John out again. He’s willing to admit that he’s amazingly stupid where John is concerned, but then, he’s always been pretty stupid where Sheppard’s concerned, too: following him into firefights and planets seething with radiation and Wraith hives. 

He’s not this stupid, though. At least that’s what he tells himself, but it doesn’t really matter – John always takes the burden from him by coming to him. 

“See how easy it is,” John croons in his ear. “I’m not him. I’m not trying to be him.” He begins to work his way down Rodney’s body. He pauses at random spots to nip the skin, to lick and taste and make Rodney twist up to his mouth. “Just say my name. And you’ll see. I’m John.”

But then, Rodney already knows John lies. Because when John talks to Sheppard, he always calls Sheppard “John.” 

+++

The next day on P2X-550, Rodney lands them all in jail for four hours before Teyla can talk their way out.

“No, seriously, McKay. What the hell were you thinking?” Sheppard says in that quiet voice that he gets when he’s really, really pissed off. 

That, as it turns out, is another one of those unanswerable questions. Because he can’t tell Sheppard the truth, which is that he was so busy trying to avoid him that he wasn’t paying any attention to where he was walking. Guilt, he has discovered, is redolent of pine. 

“They told us not to trespass on the sacred lawn. The kammet or whatever they call it. We could have had a perfectly nice relationship with them, involving, if I need to remind you, that not-quite-sugar reed that’s so useful. That you like so much.”

The best thing to do when attacked is to go on the offensive. Never mind that this is totally Rodney’s fault and he can’t truthfully deny it. But he’ll try. “I seem to recall you being the first to step on it. Fifteen minutes after we came through the gate. And I don’t remember biting your head off when you did it.”

“That would be because I didn’t get us tossed in jail. Jesus, Rodney. You haven’t been that clueless since our first year here. What’s going on? Give me a reason.”

“I was distracted, okay? Nothing more. It won’t happen again.” He looks at Sheppard when he says this to lend weight to his words. The truth is that this world is too bright, the air too fresh – it smells like baked bread and animal droppings and the wind. It’s brittle somehow, artificial, and his world is back there on Atlantis, fixed with pine-gum. He has these crazy moments when John’s not around during which he thinks he still smells bleeding sap, and then he looks up and finds Sheppard. They’re not moments where he confuses the two of them – he never does – but moments where, because Rodney’s whole world is shifting under his feet, everything he knows, including Sheppard, becomes blurry. In these moments, Rodney panics. He thinks that if he were to send John back today, the instant he gets back to the city, it would still be too late and he’d already have lost the better thing. 

Sheppard must see something in Rodney’s face. His voice tightens and he steps forward. “Do we have a problem, McKay?”

Rodney stifles a small sound. He really wishes Sheppard wouldn’t get in his space like that because it derails his thoughts to other places. 

“No,” he says. Guilt makes his voice sullen. 

+++

He needs to be more careful, to make sure that Sheppard doesn’t suspect anything. He lurches back and forth between the conviction that it’s already too late and that as long as Sheppard doesn’t know, he can still save everything in the end. Guilt has been making him avoid Sheppard as much as possible, but now he forces himself to talk over it and to hang out with the team at least every third day for a quick lunch. He does lie about the evenings, shying from movie nights and virtual golf games. Surely that’s to be expected with his increased workload due to John’s presence. 

Teyla sends him sharp looks, and Sheppard crosses his arms over his chest but remains silent. If Rodney didn’t know better, he’d say that Sheppard was feeling guilty, too, but that would be ridiculous. He hasn’t done anything

He makes a point of not getting caught with Sheppard and John together, trying to be subtle about it so that John doesn’t use it against him. In some ways, it’s actually good for Rodney to be with both of them at the same time, because it reminds him how different they are, how easy it is for him to tell them apart even if most of the city still gets them mixed up. Yet he knows he’s not good enough to fool Sheppard, not when John’s standing right there, arms crossed, his thumb stroking the inside of his elbow. 

It must only be the guilt talking when Rodney begins to think that Sheppard’s watching him now as carefully as he does his other self. See, he can’t hate John as he wants to, as John deserves. Whatever Rodney is, he’s not the type of person who can hate someone he’s having sex with. So sometimes, maybe, he hates Sheppard instead. Unfairly.

Months, or maybe years later, he’ll understand that there’s nothing unfair about the way he sometimes hates Sheppard, because that’s just the way love is. He doesn’t know this yet. 

Sheppard eats those poisonous berries, too. John gathers them when he goes to the facility. Rodney wonders if Sheppard takes them from John’s hand. He’s seen the birds peck at them, bright red juice splatted on their beaks. 

+++

“It must burn,” Rodney says later that night, “that you can’t get back at your McKay. That you’re stranded here after he shipped you off, not even knowing if it would kill you on the way, and you can’t retaliate.”

John shoots him a sidelong look. “Who says I can’t?” 

+++

On Thursday Rodney gets stuck between John and Sheppard while he’s in the middle of his weekly target practice. It was Ronon who finally convinced him to give it a go, and he’s usually the one down here with him, although sometimes it’s Sheppard. Generally it’s an hour of “cock your head slightly to the right,” and “McKay, are you even trying?” and “Okay, at least you’re not flinching anymore,” and “The heart is over there, you know,” but sometimes, especially when it’s Sheppard, at the end, there’s a “Not bad, Rodney,” and one of those surprisingly sweet smiles that Sheppard sometimes aims at him when he’s not busy being a complete asshole. And the next thing Rodney knows, he’s back at the range a week later as if that alone will give him the little fizz of energy that comes afterwards.

But this time, John shows up. “Hey, Ronon,” he says. “Heard Keller was looking for you. I’ll help McKay.” This is probably another one of his lies, the kind that’s hard to be sure of, easy to deny or hand over apologies for. Just a misunderstanding. Ronon shrugs and claps John on the shoulder, probably a bit harder than necessary – John winces – and Rodney has no idea if Ronon's just being manly or if he’s telling John something.

Within minutes, Rodney’s shots are all over the place. John stands just behind him, being there, offering the occasional comment after tapping Rodney on the shoulder and moving his ear muffs for him. The hot flutter of his breath raises the hairs on the back of Rodney’s neck, and Rodney can’t concentrate, can’t hold his aim steady. It doesn’t help when Adams and Foster salute him on their way out and the room is suddenly empty. 

“Let me show you,” John says as he brings his arms up to frame Rodney’s. His finger curls around Rodney’s on the trigger. “Spread your legs a bit wider,” he suggests against Rodney’s cheek.

The room is too hot, windowless, tight. Rodney can feel sweat bead on his brow and he elbows John back and pulls the trigger again and again and again. When he looks away from the blasted target, Sheppard is leaning against the wall, one leg propped up. Rodney pulls away his muffs. 

“Thought I’d lend a hand,” Sheppard tells Rodney.

John hands Rodney another clip to reload. “I got it covered.” He smiles blandly at Sheppard. “I know you have more important things to do.”

Sheppard smiles back tightly. “Nope.” He steps forward, closer to Rodney, and pushes the button to bring forward a fresh paper man. “One more stationary, and then you need to work on moving targets.” It’s not Rodney he’s looking at when he says this, though.

Rodney’s blood pressure is going through the roof. He absolutely doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle of this, especially not in the range, with all manner of weapons, where he doesn’t want to be in the first place. He thinks of his ordered lab where he’s the one who sets everyone else on edge, of the patient data waiting there for him.

John says, “I’m going to have him work with a P-90 next, actually,” and Rodney doesn’t wait to hear any more, but slides his muffs back into place and begins firing. The steady kick of the gun in his hands, the blast of noise, these things almost drown out the hostility behind him. But not quite, and in the sudden silence that follows his last shot, he hears too much of John and Sheppard’s furious conversation – “You can’t—” and “Rodney isn’t—” and “aborted mission” and “not yours” and “Wraith” and “Don’t you dare—” and “You haven’t found a way to stop the Replicators,” and “If you hadn’t lost Elizabeth—” and “I don’t see you thinking of a brilliant way out of this clusterfuck of a galaxy” and “Don’t even try to pin Michael on me. Like you didn’t do the exact same thing six months earlier than us!”—

and he snaps, just snaps and spins around, slamming his gun onto the rack against the wall and glares at both of them, and spits out, “Sure, and if you hadn’t woken up the Wraith, the entire galaxy wouldn’t be in the mess it is.” 

They both stare at him. Out of the corner of his eye, Rodney sees a piece of his paper target float to the floor and then there’s a faint crunching sound that shatters the suspended moment caught in the triangle of their bodies. John has popped a kunia berry between his fingers. 

When Rodney finally risks a glance at Sheppard, he sees that Sheppard’s face is studiously neutral, although his arms are crossed over his chest and Rodney can count the pulse of the vein on the side of his neck. There’s a dot of scarlet juice on his face from John’s squished berry. Rodney’s drawn blood with his words, and maybe in that moment he meant to, couldn’t have done anything else. 

John rests his hand on his arm and drawls, “You know, Doctor McKay, if you hadn’t rewritten the Replicator coding so that they could mess with it, all the people on the planets they wiped out would still be alive.” 

One more look at Sheppard, and Rodney knows he’s thought of this, too, even if he's not the one who said it, even if his hands are trembling with the effort of not punching the one who did, and Rodney’s out the door, walking away. 

As always, Sheppard’s face gives Rodney nothing he wants. John’s eyes, in contrast, glitter with approval. 

+++

That night while the twin moons rise high outside Rodney’s window, John slinks across the floor, crawling on hands and knees, and fingerfucks himself with his legs braced around Rodney, and Rodney whispers his name, “John.” 

This is the thing that frightens Rodney the most. That the same events unfold in both realities, maybe not at the same time or the same place or in the same way, but the end point – the end point is there. Carson and Michael and the Wraith, the Replicators, the second Zed PM, Elizabeth. 

John’s lips rest against the soft flesh where shoulder meets chest and press the words, “I told you so, Doctor,” into his skin.

+++

“Are you trying to turn me into him?” Rodney asks. “The McKay you know?” It would make sense. Here, in an unfamiliar world where things look familiar, John might want at least one thing to be truly the same. 

“Why, is it working?” John swings his golf club, borrowed from Sheppard weeks ago, and knocks a ball into the ocean. 

“So you admit it.” The other McKay – he hates John. Impossible that he doesn’t, although there’s no way to tell if it's for the same reason that Rodney wants to. Whether he hates him for the same reason that he can’t stay away from him, the way Rodney wants to and can’t.

John shrugs. “No. I can’t make you into anything you’re not.” 

+++

Sheppard snags him in a corridor. 

Rodney points down the hallway after Zelenka. “Sorry, I’m with him. If this isn’t life-threatening, it has to wait.”

“What’s up with you and the other me?”

The world contracts around Rodney. “What do you mean? Did he say something to you?” He’s proud of the way his voice doesn’t come out two octaves higher.

“I don’t know. Does he have something to say to me?”

“No,” Rodney says quickly. “I mean, not as far as I know, but actually, he did forget to tell us about the other Zed PM, so maybe he also forgot to mention some ammo stores or something you’d like. I don’t know.” He also doesn’t know why he’s protecting John. 

So, “Actually,” he corrects himself, “he didn’t forget about the Zed PM. He deliberately didn’t say anything.” 

Sheppard’s eyebrows are raised high on his forehead. “You knew that? And it didn’t occur to you to report it?”

“Well, like anyone was going to believe me,” Rodney sputters. “Wait. You knew?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have said anything right away, either. Kept something as a bargaining chip.”

Rodney stares at him. The fact that Sheppard obviously knows that John’s not quite so filled with goodwill as he appears would give Rodney hope – hope of an ally in this mess – except that it’s Sheppard, the one person he can’t turn to. What’s he going to say, “Yeah, we need to keep an eye on John, and by the way, I’ve been fucking him for a month.” 

Instead he says, “You know, you can be a real asshole, too.” And that’s something, and not exactly surprising after four years of knowing Sheppard, so he feels just a bit better about his own actions. 

+++

“You’re in a – ” John makes a noise like a cat stretching, “– good mood today.” 

Rodney pushes his cock past the muscle of John’s ass and pauses to taunt them both before he slams into John’s body as far as he can go. “Yup,” he grunts.

John raises his head and narrows his eyes. He manages to look amazingly put out for someone being fucked within an inch of his life. There are smashed berries on his skin where Rodney had pushed him against the table and they spilled.

It’s Rodney’s turn to smile at him, as much as he can while buried inside his tight body. It feels so damn good that he can’t separate his cock from the rest of his body. There are white splinters of pleasure spiking all over him. He can’t believe he’s doing this. Giving in, finally, and fucking him, and all the while telling himself he’s only doing it to turn the tables on John, doing it to piss him off, to beat him at his own game. John’s had his revenge on his McKay – he can go back and regale his other self with taunting tales of all the things he did to him, to another McKay, a stand-in, and Rodney – that’s not Rodney’s problem. He refuses to let it be.

He hums happily to convince himself as much as anything. To remind himself why he’s doing this. In retaliation, John clenches his ass down around his cock so hard Rodney nearly comes right then. 

“Why?” John gasps. His legs are thrown up on Rodney’s shoulders, and Rodney turns his head and presses an open-mouthed kiss to one knee just before he bites down on the thin skin there.

“Because I finally realized it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to matter. All this.” He pulls almost all the way out, as if this can distract John, keep him from scenting the lie. Because he's beginning to understand that it will always matter, as long as it’s Sheppard. 

He can feel his own muscles, the way they’ll become sore overnight. So he says, because if you say things they become real and he needs this to be real to John even if he can’t quite convince himself, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t have it. You. It’s none of Sheppard’s business, he doesn’t need to know. It’s not like I’m fucking him.” 

Let John believe it doesn’t matter, that he has no power over Rodney. 

John strokes his skin insinuatingly. “But you want him to know. You want him to see everything you really are. You want him to punish you.” John’s jacking himself off now, and neither one of them is going to last much longer. “If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

John comes with an obscene, hungry noise, and Rodney stiffens and gasps, “What?”

“You deserve this, Doctor McKay,” and Rodney’s about to nod, except that through his sex-haze he registers the satisfied quality of John’s voice. He’s not nearly as upset as he should be that Rodney’s managed to win, to yank back control, and Rodney wonders, even as his body splinters into suddenly joyless orgasm around his mind, if he’s misread the situation after all.

+++

Rodney still finds Sheppard watching John. He doesn’t make any particular effort to hide it, at least not from Rodney. 

“How’s the work coming on the device?” he asks.

Rodney knows exactly what he’s talking about. He glances up from his laptop. “Which one? I’ve got about thirty devices I’m working on.”

“The one from M56-3X2.” To judge from Sheppard’s tone of voice, it doesn’t sound like Rodney’s fooled him. Sheppard is eating those berries, and Rodney knows what they taste like. 

“I assigned the work to Dr. Gupta.”

Sheppard rests his weight on Rodney’s lab table and props his foot on the rung of Rodney’s stool, facing him. “Rodney, one could get the impression that you don’t want the other me to go home.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Rodney says sharply. “‘The other me.’ You’re not—” Before Sheppard can call him out on his slip, he barrels on, “And if one might get the impression that I don’t want to send John back, then one might be wrong,” he says with undue emphasis on every other word. He can’t quite control the unwarranted edge in his voice. “But it doesn’t matter anyway if John goes home tomorrow or next week. It’s not like he’s doing anything wrong here.” Not according to the rules, at least. “Although I suppose some people in his Atlantis might want him back.” 

“‘John?’ I thought I was going to be John.” 

Rodney covers his wince with a swig of coffee. 

“Well,” he says, suddenly furious at his own inability to set things right, “I’m sure the McKay on his side of things is trying to get him back. Maybe he’ll find a way first.” He doesn’t balk at the lie despite the look on Sheppard’s face. He's the only one trying to fix things, damn it, and it's not fair. He's not the only problem here. If Sheppard would just give him a little more, just something, but – 

“Rodney,” Sheppard says, looking as if he’s going to reach out to him. Rodney steps back unreasonably fast, and Sheppard stares down at the space on the floor between them. It’s just that he can’t risk Sheppard touching him. He doesn’t know what will happen if he does, and maybe nothing would, but he’s afraid that his body would respond despite himself, despite his mind, despite the fact that he never did and still doesn’t want Sheppard. Rodney’s never been one to trust his own body. 

“The thing is that you – he – Rodney.” Sheppard sounds like he’s choking, and Rodney wants to laugh, maybe hysterically, because he has no idea what Sheppard's choking on. Because, really, he's the one who should be choking, here.

“You have to be careful of him,” says Sheppard, finally, spitting the words. 

Of all the things to come out of his mouth. “What?” Rodney tries not to yelp. He feels a bit numb.

“Rodney.” 

It’s the third time Sheppard’s said his name, and when Rodney finally looks at him, he sees something aimed at himself, so powerful that he flushes and staggers back. Because whatever Sheppard thinks he knows, he could only know it if he's felt the temptation of whatever he’s trying to warn Rodney against, too late. Because every time he thought he wanted more from Sheppard, he had no idea, no gauge of how much more there might really be for the giving or the taking, and the strength of it makes him reel the way a boy used to beer reacts to his first taste of whiskey. 

+++

Because late at night, in the mornings, at noon under the bright sun; in corners with sharp edges of pine and against railings and in open places, John tells Rodney that Sheppard loves him. Which Rodney knows is nonsense. He doesn’t believe it, won’t believe it, and not just because the very idea hurts. So he says, “Of course he does. Teyla and Ronon and me – we’re his team. To Sheppard, that’s like family.” 

“I know you’re smarter than that, Doctor McKay,” John tells him in his fuck-me voice. He sits on the edge of the bed popping bright red berries into his mouth, one by one. Rodney thinks he only eats them when he’s around him. Otherwise he’d be eating far more than can be healthy. Not that a berry that’s related to the nightshade family can be good at all – Rodney took samples to the botanists. After all, it’s his team eating them, Sheppard especially. Like John. There must be something with his taste buds that reacts favorably to the fruit, something sweet. To Rodney, it’s only bitter, bitter, overlaying the taste of John’s mouth. 

+++

Rodney knows John’s figured out that he hates to be in the same room with both of them when John requests permission from Carter to join Sheppard’s team on an away mission. He’s been going out with Lorne’s team every so often. Just Lorne’s team. Lorne’s the only one sure enough to be able to command a man who from all appearances is his CO, and a higher rank to boot. 

Carter had asked Sheppard before she let John go with Lorne. “Will it cause problems for you?” Sheppard told his team the story over lunch. “I told her no. That I’d just have Ronon beat Lorne up if he got uppity after.” His grin was straight and true over his paguna juice. That was only two weeks ago. 

“Duh,” Rodney’d said. “You’re entirely different people.” His voice was perhaps a bit too strident. Teyla looked at him curiously. As long as they’re entirely separate people, surely that minimizes his betrayal. This is why John is wrong about Sheppard loving him. He has to be. Because otherwise Rodney's really made a mistake, and it's not just huge; it's a fucking disaster.

Carter asks Sheppard about John’s request to come with his own team as well. This time Rodney’s standing there. “I think he’s bored.” She looks expectantly at Sheppard. “I hear you don’t do too well with that. Of course, if he comes, he’ll be under your command.”

Sheppard’s lips tighten. He glances at Rodney so swiftly Rodney almost misses it, and then says, “Fine. It won’t be a regular thing, though, because McKay’s going to send him back soon.”

“That’s good news,” Carter says. She turns to Rodney. “You’ve made progress, then.”

“Ah.” Rodney glares at Sheppard. Sheppard rocks back on his heels.

+++

Later, he sees Sheppard in a furious conversation with John. They’re both speaking so quietly that Rodney can’t hear them. The surprise isn’t that it looks like Sheppard’s going to punch John, but that judging from the tilt of John’s jaw, John might be egging him on, asking for it, for a punishing blow. 

He can’t think why John would invite such a thing. 

When John catches sight of him down the corridor, for once he doesn’t radiate smugness. Sheppard turns too, slightly, and his face is half in shadow. His body is angled away from John, from Rodney, too, as if Rodney dreamed that moment when Sheppard tried to warn him about John, too little, maybe too late. 

+++

“Do you think he knows?” John appears meditative. “The way you use his body?”

A scarlet bloom of fury spreads through Rodney’s chest. He wasn’t expecting this, but then, that’s probably why John said it. 

“Maybe I should tell him before I leave. Just to be fair. You understand.”

“Haven’t you already had your revenge?” Rodney chokes out. 

John makes an amused sound, quiet, not really amused at all, and wraps his arms around Rodney and rests his chin on his shoulder. “Not quite revenge,” he says. “But if it helps you to think of it that way, then, okay. We’re almost there.”

“I’m going to send you back,” Rodney promises, and this time John does laugh. 

“Oh, Doctor McKay. I know. ” 

+++

The mission is perfectly normal. This means that everything goes to hell about five hours after they arrive. It’s a first contact mission, as it has to be because they can’t exactly take John along with Sheppard to visit people they already know. There’s a flurry of excitement when the Zelundians look back and forth between the two Sheppards. Later they find out that twins are practically unknown on this world.

The few Ancient ruins outside the village don’t yield any surprises. Rodney takes several crystals, the only intact ones, and puts them in his bag. 

“We should ask their permission,” Teyla reproves. Rodney’s already shaking his head. “They don’t even know what they are or any use for them. I hardly think” – and that’s when he looks up and his heart stops. John is standing ten feet away from him, with his P-90 pointed straight at Rodney, and even as Rodney thinks, “Oh my god, this is finally it, this is his revenge and he’s going to use the gate to run, what a MORON,” John is opening fire. 

It’s one of those moments when the world really does move in slow-motion. Rodney dives to the ground, but it feels like he’s merely listing, and Sheppard’s yell from across the ruins gets caught in the wake of bullets. He’s sure he can feel the sharp singe of them whiz past his arm, and all the while he’s staring at John, at the look of almost calm concentration on his face. As Rodney falls, he sees Teyla and Ronon spin, still in slow-motion, their weapons coming up, and he wants to cry out that they’re looking at the wrong thing, at something behind Rodney, when it’s John, right in front of them, the way he’s been for weeks.

And then there’s utter silence.

A hand at his elbow shakes him. “Rodney, you okay? McKay?” Sheppard’s bending low over him, running his hands down his body to check for wounds. 

Rodney rolls over and meets his eyes. “I’m fine,” he says, but his voice cracks embarrassingly. 

Sheppard’s jaw tightens and his eyes flicker over to John. Rodney’s follow. John is watching them, his gun lowered. “We gotta go,” Sheppard says. “Those shots’ll bring the whole village down on us.” He hauls Rodney to his feet and just as quickly lets go. “Teyla, take point.” As they leave, Rodney passes a fallen young man, bright with blood, and something silver and long on the ground next to his open hand. His eyes are wide and glassy and dead. 

Once they’re in the air and cloaked, Sheppard sets the auto-pilot and whirls on John. “What the hell was that?” His voice is gritty, the way it gets when he’s fighting for control, and Rodney has to turn and stare out the window when he realizes why he knows that, the other times when he’s heard him strain to keep control, Rodney’s cock in his ass and fist around his dick. 

“I was saving Doctor McKay’s life.” 

Rodney wants to laugh, or maybe vomit.

“I saw the sun glint off something the guy was carrying. It looked like a weapon, and he was bringing it up into a firing position. I preempted him.” John’s voice is even. He doesn’t falter.

Sheppard looks unimpressed. “You mean what could have been a firing position, if those people had guns or projectile weapons. Which we saw no evidence of in their village. You will fire” – he steps forward into John’s space – “on my command. And not before. Is that understood?” 

John tilts his head and doesn’t blink and says, “McKay’s life is worth so little to you?” 

Every line in Sheppard’s body is hard. “I don’t explain myself to you. Now. Is. That. Understood?”

John says, “Yes, sir,” like there’s a bit of silk in his voice and he looks at Rodney. 

Ronon and Teyla say nothing but their silence is a barrier, and John doesn’t look at them. Rodney hasn’t seen them taking lunch with John lately. 

John maintains eye contact with Rodney and slowly, deliberately, blinks, and Rodney knows that not only was it anything but a mistake, but also that John wants him to know this while his skin is still clammy with fright. Then John claps his hand on his shoulder, just high enough so his thumb can brush the sweaty skin under his collar, and says, “I hope I didn’t scare you too badly, Doctor,” and Sheppard, who’s back in the pilot’s seat, twists around with his hands still on the HUD like they’re bound by twining branches or stuck with fresh sap. He stares at Rodney. 

Desperate, Rodney stares back to see if John is right, uncaring for once of what else Sheppard might find. But there’s nothing of love in his face, nothing open, only fury that’s as much directed at Rodney as it is at John.

+++

John is sucking the frail skin covering Rodney’s Adam’s apple when he tells him that he wants Rodney to fist him.

Rodney thinks about how Sheppard hasn’t spoken to him outside of a work context since that mission two days ago, and he shudders.

+++

“He hates me, you know,” he blurts out, pleading, to Sheppard. He’s intercepted him on his way out of the mess, which he left shortly after Rodney sat down at the table. Across the room, John was talking with some marines. 

“Really.” A month ago, Rodney would have taken his straight face as deadpan, his voice sarcastic but teasing. 

It’s not a month ago.

“He thinks I did this to him, sent him here. But not even on purpose, I mean, not here on purpose, but it was deliberate that I – the other McKay, the one where he’s from – he thinks that McKay deliberately mucked up the device, even though it could have killed him. Maybe because it could have killed him. Like Russian roulette.”

Sheppard shrugs, looking so much like John that Rodney’s heart seizes. “Did you?”

Rodney looks away. “Probably.” He knows the answer is yes.

“Huh,” Sheppard says, and then, “I don’t give a fuck what he thinks about you. And I would have thought that I didn’t give two flying fucks about what some other you did. Only now I’m not so sure. Maybe you do have something in common. Jesus, Rodney, what were you thinking!” he hisses. “I told you to be careful around him.” 

There’s the fury again, almost frantic, and in a similar state of panicked anger Rodney shoots back, “Why? Are you afraid of what I might be, or what you might be?” and he barely knows what he’s talking about, just, suddenly, terrifyingly, that he’s scored a direct hit. 

Sheppard opens his mouth to say something else, to slam into him, he’s sure, but at the last second, he doesn’t. And Rodney’s afraid, more even than he was when John fired his P-90 right past him, that the words Sheppard doesn’t say are, “So long, Rodney.” 

He stands there after Sheppard’s gone, slumped against the wall. When he looks up from his contemplation of the floor, John’s there, a soft, secret smile playing about his mouth, and the pleasure in his eyes is open and pure, and he looks beautiful. “Come with me,” he says gently. 

+++

The next day, they go to P5X-004 as planned, just the team, the four of them. At breakfast before they leave, John sits down next to Rodney and places his hand on his thigh under the table. It’s a warm weight. 

Sheppard’s eyes bore through the metal surface as if he can see that touch. He continues talking to Ronon, and Rodney wants to shrug off John’s hand, to shift his leg away, but he can’t. 

The mission is freezing. It’s an early autumn day, and the harvest is coming in under a bright sun, and Rodney is frozen under the ice of Sheppard’s anger. Because, please, let it be anger and not hurt. Rodney can take all the fury Sheppard has to lay on him, would welcome it, in fact. Surely he deserves it, because the skin under Sheppard’s eyes seems more lined than Rodney remembers, the grey at his temples more pronounced, and Sheppard looks at him only once on the mission, about five hours in. 

The place on Rodney’s leg where John pressed earlier burns with frostbite, with the knowledge – so much, all of it – in Sheppard’s eyes and the steady, steady weight, like John’s hand, bearing down on them both.

+++

Rodney’s body has a strength he mostly forgets he possesses. He values the power of his mind. But in this moment, with John’s shirt clutched in his hand as he yanks him down the empty hallway into his room, he discovers that strength. And if John is just playing along, it’s going to be the last time. 

Once in John’s room, Rodney shoves him against the wall and shoves his pants down until they bag at his ankles. He’s going to regret this later – his knees will lock in protest – but for now, that doesn’t matter. What matters is opening his mouth around John’s flaccid cock, the way he mouths it tenderly before he begins to tease him to hardness. It takes little effort. John responds almost instantly. One hand Rodney wraps around the base; the other he uses to play with John’s balls, to stroke his finger across his perineum and back, up the crack between his cheeks. 

John’s head falls back against the wall with a dull thud. “Okay,” he says. “We can work with this,” and his hand tangles in Rodney’s hair and Rodney hums savagely around his cock. It pulses in his mouth, the rush of blood like a tide coming in, and Rodney rolls his eyes up to look at John with grim satisfaction. There’s a slight bitterness at the back of his throat.

When John’s cock is slick from his mouth, Rodney pulls away. “Get on the bed,” he tells him. John smirks and obeys. Rodney gets the lube.

It’s not meant to be done this way, Rodney knows, not in anger. He has to do it, though. He’s never done it before, and he never thought he would, has never had the desire to, and even now, he doesn’t, not really. He’s not sure what he means by it – if he means to give John what he wants, what he’s been asking for for reasons Rodney doesn’t understand; if he means to punish John for the look in Sheppard’s eyes; if he means to push himself as far as he can just to see how far that is, if there’s any point at which he’ll turn back. 

He thinks he’ll never get tired of seeing the curve of John’s ass presented to him, but even this is a taunt. His own cock is pressing painfully against his pants. He ignores it, and bites down on John’s cheek just to see him jump. John’s head hangs down between his shoulders. He’s braced on his elbows and knees, and the position makes the bones jut out of his back. 

John says, “Get on with it,” in an insufferably smug, if aroused, voice that takes away any last remaining doubts Rodney might have had about this. He’s read about fisting, about how to do it. The first three fingers go in easy – “Such a whore, John,” and John wiggles back with a moan of agreement – but after that, resistance builds. Rodney doesn’t let it deter him, only slow him down.

The problem with adding a fourth finger isn’t so much the finger, but the way his hand widens past the knuckles where his fingers join the flat of his hand. John grunts, and there’s sweat sheening his back. Rodney winces, but he has no choice, if he ever did at all, even long before John showed up in the middle of the night. They should have spent weeks, months building up to this, building trust, and Rodney hates that John made him do this, because he did, pushed until Rodney had no alternative, and Rodney’s cock is still hard. He unzips his pants enough to let it spring free. He sighs at the easing of pressure.

He’s going to break John this time. He has to.

“You’re going to take them all,” he says, and John makes an animal noise and tries to push back on his hand. Rodney smacks his ass. “When I say, not you,” and, “Jesus,” John gasps. Rodney licks the sweat from the hollow at the base of his spine and lets the bitter salt sting his throat. 

He’s used so much lube it’s dripping down his arm, and he swipes it up with his free hand and uses that to palm John’s cock. He can only imagine what the burn of his four fingers feels like in John’s ass, split open, the way every pulse of John’s cock as he strokes it is mirrored in the helpless clench of muscle around John’s opening. 

But for all that he can only imagine it, it might as well be him because his entire body is caught in a rictus of pleasure, an open cry of pain. As he pulls out his fingers just enough to add the thumb, his hand formed into a beak, he feels that he might be the one to break apart. It would be easier, easier to just cut into his chest, through the breastbone, and rip out his heart, anything but this because he feels like he’s raping John, or John is raping him, and they’re one and the same thing. He hates John that he’s doing this, that John is seeing him this way, and he knows from the sharp angle of John’s spine that John feels exactly the same way, vulnerable and raw and bleeding, and completely unable to run to safety because none exists. 

His own right hand might shatter him, and he finds himself smoothing his sticky, lube-smeared left hand over John’s back, the way one calms a startled horse, and he’s saying something, they both are. “John,” he says, “John,” and John’s breathing is harsh and splintered as he whimpers around the word “fuck.”

When the widest part of Rodney’s hand presses past the ever-loosening ring of muscle at the entrance of John’s ass, John keens. “I can’t,” he says, “can’t breathe,” and neither can Rodney. “You will,” Rodney tells him, and he pushes in further. He can feel the moment something in him breaks because it’s the same moment that John gives in, too.

“Don’t,” John begs, and Rodney says, “Bastard,” which is the same thing John is saying, and Rodney is the one who can’t, even as he does, even as his hand begins to move more easily, all the way in now. “You made me do this,” he accuses, as the world falls away from him, leaving only his hand and forearm buried in John’s ass and a resiny burn of miserable ecstasy shooting up his spinal cord. 

“Are you happy now?” he asks, his voice thick. “Have you had your revenge?”

“Yes,” John hisses, and he turns his head over his shoulder and Rodney sees that his lip is bloody like kunia berries where he bit down on it, and that his face is wet with tears he doesn’t even seem to notice, and that thing – that vital piece of Rodney that broke – it shatters into a million pieces. 

He whispers, “Why?” and John with his glistening lips says, “Because I’m a bastard. A piece of shit, and Sheppard, your John, he knows it, and he’s terrified of being me.” His eyes close, lashes spiky against his cheek for the briefest moment, and then, neck still turned back at its awkward angle, his eyes open and bore into Rodney. 

“All his life he's been afraid of me. Because he chose something else. He chose to be different. I told you, he loves you. But there you were, standing right on the edge, you could have had everything.” The line of John’s spine is just a little crooked, just a bit too prominent even for this angle. He inhales, a sudden hitch. “Everything, for fuck’s sake. How was I supposed to just let that happen?”

Rodney looks down at his arm enveloped by John’s body, lost in John, and he says, “I don’t understand. You made him hate me. It wasn’t enough that you tried to turn me into something else, but you made him hate me.” 

John’s laugh is a broken thing, and maybe, maybe a denial of Rodney’s last words. “Rodney,” he says, “Rodney,” and it’s the closest thing Rodney’s going to get to an apology. 

John's eyes roll back in pleasure when Rodney moves his arm. When he comes, he comes around Rodney’s hand and wrist and forearm, every muscle of his body contracting as if he has no choice and the only thing holding him together is Rodney’s arm, bracing him from the inside, cleaving to his organs and his soul. Rodney bends low over him. He finds the line of flesh on John’s own forearm, the place where the muscles twine together above and below the bone, and he bites down quietly, against the dark hair, before he begins to pull his arm out, before John winces as his body tries to keep Rodney there, before Rodney lets him fall to the bed, limp and boneless. 

But it’s Rodney who feels left, lost, abandoned. It’s his body clenching around nothing but fleeting air, everything inside that’s empty, empty. Perhaps at the end there was one thing John didn’t lie about. Some part of Rodney’s always known how Sheppard felt, and he was just as unready as Sheppard was to admit it – Sheppard who wants to keep everyone at a distance, Sheppard who is afraid of being loved, of being pinned down, where maybe it’s all Rodney’s ever really wanted. 

+++

After, when Rodney’s showered and let the hot water beat his limp cock – he couldn’t come and has never been so grateful – and when he’s cleaned John up a bit, not enough because he can’t bear to look to him, because when he does he doesn’t know whether to feel like he’s the violator or the violated, and when he’s tasted the iron salt from John’s chin where blood and tears mingled – after all that, Rodney says out loud to no one, “Enough.”

Four days and sleepless nights later, he sends John home. 

He stands with John and Sheppard in the Ancient facility with the device, and John turns to Sheppard to tell him that he’s a fool, and to Rodney to say nothing – there is nothing to say – and a few seconds later when he’s gone, the only thing Rodney’s aware of is the sharp tang of the pine trees closing in around him.

His pants snag themselves on the kunia vines on the way out. 

+++

Back on Atlantis, Rodney waits for things to return to normal. The problem, aside from the whole other problem of Sheppard not speaking to him, is that with John gone only Sheppard’s left for Rodney to see. But Sheppard is walking around in John’s body, the body that Rodney knows intimately, far better than he should.

It’s what he feared all along. He wants that body. John woke something in him. He thinks about the press of it against his, only, apparently, that’s not it entirely. Because somewhere getting in the way of mindless lust, there stands whatever’s left of his friendship with Sheppard. Sheppard is – was – his friend, and it was John he wanted, not Sheppard. The thought of sex with Sheppard leaves Rodney vaguely clammy and churlish where the idea of sex with John made the blood rush around his ears and pool below his navel. 

This is Sheppard, for Christ’s sake. The presence of desire doesn’t mean Rodney’s comfortable with it. 

He understands John better, in a way, than Sheppard. He understands sex: an unattractive part of him got a kick out of the freedom of lashing out sexually and verbally at John, who deserved it, who might as well have asked for it. And Rodney’s more comfortable with John's kind of vicious hate that borders on love against its own will, such as it was, because it demands something from him. 

Sheppard – Sheppard demands nothing of him. He asks for nothing and gives nothing, and now Sheppard’s further from him than ever. Partly because of his own fuck-ups with John, and partly because John or no John, Sheppard’s a fuck-up himself. Rodney’s left knowing things he’s not supposed to know about his best friend. How his face contorts in pleasure, how he sounds when he comes.

Rodney becomes a thief in the night, stealing Sheppard’s body for his mind’s John. 

+++

By the time a month has passed, Sheppard is speaking to him again. It’s forced, a little, and Rodney still has problems looking him in the eye because every time he does, at least when some crisis isn’t upon them and distracting Rodney, he sees John’s face streaked with tears and blood and something like sorrow. Sometimes Sheppard is not two feet from him and Rodney will realize that he misses his friend. He has to watch every word now before it comes out of his mouth, measure it against the probability of Sheppard’s shoulders drawing tight, and he’s not cut out for that. He longs for the carelessness they once had. 

Teyla offers to help him meditate with her, which has him blustering through his excuses while trying not to piss her off too badly. 

“Yes,” she says. “Colonel Sheppard would not join me, either.” She arches her eyebrows. 

Ronon spends three weeks making sure – it’s got to be deliberate – that all the blueberry muffins are gone from the mess by the time Rodney gets there. He also leads Sheppard on runs several times a week past the science labs, a route they’ve never taken before. Rodney hasn’t figured out what message that’s supposed to send, or to whom.

“Hey, McKay,” Sheppard says one day. “You hear about how DeJamal’s team brought back more crystals for your scientists to play with?”

Rodney doesn’t know how to respond. Once, he would have snapped, “Yes, of course, I read the same mission notes you do, and oh, that’s right, DeJamal delivered straight to the head of science, which would be me,” because Sheppard knows as well as he does that this is old information. But now, now maybe this is an olive branch, and Rodney doesn’t want to throw that back in Sheppard’s face, especially when he knows that Sheppard’s not the one who should be holding it out. It’s just that every time he tries to approach Sheppard, he’s paralyzed by the leanness of his body, by all the things he’s not supposed to know. 

So he says, “Yes, I heard, thank you, Colonel.” Which, apparently, is exactly the wrong thing to say, judging from the immediate downward twist to Sheppard’s mouth, familiar, so familiar. 

+++

“Uhm,” Rodney says. He looks at the hem of his sleeve. Sheppard takes off his tac vest and puts it in his locker. They’re the last two in the locker room after the mission. “The botanists think they’ve finally managed to hybridize a Pegasus corn.”

“That’s good,” says Sheppard slowly.

“You know, for popcorn.” Rodney clears his throat. “Right.” He points out the door. “I better get to the lab to work on this data.”

By the time Sheppard says, “Okay,” Rodney’s already out the door. It’s a faint sound, a word chasing after him.

+++

Rodney’s in his boxers and a t-shirt when the door chimes. “What now?” he huffs. He’s been running around all day working on everyone else’s projects but his own, because half his staff is incompetent and the rest aren’t, but they sure put on a good show of it today. 

The door slides open to reveal Sheppard standing there. He steps in. “I can’t take this anymore,” and the door slips shut behind him.

“Oh, thank god,” Rodney says, heartfelt, and for one startling moment, he knows it’s going to be okay. Only – “What should we do?”

Sheppard rubs the back of his neck. “Have sex, I reckon.”

“'Reckon?’” Rodney echoes, for lack of anything better to say, because they’re still staring at each other across the room and his cock is entirely soft about the idea and really, he might feel better if Sheppard had come to yell at him for being such an ass instead of just handing himself over, except that maybe Sheppard actually wants this even if Rodney’s stuck on the “holy shit, he’s my best friend” part of things, and oh, crap, why’s Sheppard going with sex? How long did he know? And thank god Rodney’s not the only one who’s being driven mad, who can’t take this anymore, and maybe actually right now he wants nothing so much as to bump shoulders with him and, okay, maybe lick his skin right there where it disappears into his uniform, and yes, generally be a bit closer than friends should be, but— 

“Jesus, Rodney, breathe.” 

“Okay, that’s a good plan. Just, just, I don’t know, come here. Let’s start slow.”

When Sheppard is a foot away from him, Rodney looks down. He can’t help it, even though it feels weird to check out his friend so blatantly. “Are you even, you know—” and he clears his throat meaningfully. 

“Not yet,” Sheppard tells him, and maybe he sounds a bit indignant. “I’m not seventeen anymore.”

“Right.” Rodney stares at Sheppard; Sheppard stares back. There’s an awkward pressure between them, something in the air, like they’re two identical poles of a magnet. “For fuck’s sake,” Rodney says finally, and he hauls Sheppard against him and mashes their lips together with nothing resembling finesse but something resembling eagerness. As kisses go, it’s not the worst Rodney’s ever had because he hasn’t managed to forget yet about Mary Sullivan his freshman year of college, but it’s not like he remembers it with John. Sheppard’s lips are stiff somehow, and dry, and even when Rodney traces his tongue over his lower lip and Sheppard lets him in, Rodney’s own lips feel rubbery and numb. 

After a minute, Rodney pulls away. Sheppard tastes like kunia berries, and Rodney’s tongue is bitter with the flavor. Sheppard wrinkles his face. 

“Hum.” Rodney studies him. “Let’s try something else,” and without further ado, he pulls Sheppard’s pants away and pushes him onto the bed and straddles him. He’s disheveled and this, this rumpled, half-naked look, this is something Rodney knows on him, so he bends over and wraps his hand around his dick and his mouth around its head, and Sheppard arches up with a strangled shout. 

“Shit, Rodney,” he gasps. “Some warning might be nice.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rodney mumbles around his cock. “Everyone likes blow jobs.” And it’s true, Sheppard’s body is responding, his cock filling, although perhaps a trifle more slowly than Rodney’s accustomed to, and maybe Rodney’s own dick is still catching on as well, but there’s a certain kind of sense-memory going on here that stiffens his cock, the familiar taste and smell of this body, the familiar weight of this cock in his mouth, the familiar sound of Sheppard’s ragged breathing.

When he’s got him fully hard, Rodney looks up and just as quickly looks down because Sheppard’s fists are twisting in the sheets, the knuckles white, and this should tell Rodney how badly he wants this, how great his need is, and yet somehow only speaks of Sheppard’s reluctance. As if he’s forcing his body into this, and Rodney’s own body yields, not to the heat of Sheppard’s cock next to his face, but to his reluctance, and then, there, he's lost the edge of desire. 

“What’s wrong?” he says.

“Nothing.”

“Right,” Rodney says, and he sits up and wipes his mouth. “If you’re going to lie to me, you can just leave.” He thinks that John was wrong, that he in his own brief moment of epiphany as he pulled his fist out of John’s ass, was wrong, that Sheppard doesn’t love him. Never did. But he doesn’t know why, then, Sheppard would do this. Sex is the next logical step. 

“Look,” says Sheppard after a long pause. “I just haven’t done this in a while.”

Rodney makes a considering noise. He knows that something’s not right here, and it’s no surprise because for four years, he never once thought of Sheppard like this, splayed before him, nor did he ever get the sense that Sheppard thought of him this way, but he also knows that he – they – can’t go back to the way it was because it’s too late for that. They know too much now, although Rodney has the feeling that Sheppard still knows more than he does. And since they can’t go back to the way it was, they might as well go forward, because Rodney’s realizing with a fierceness that surprises him that he’s not willing to just walk away from Sheppard. He can’t do that, and maybe that’s always been the problem, with John and now with Sheppard.

“Okay,” he tells him, and he sucks Sheppard’s cock back into his mouth. His jaw is aching by the time Sheppard comes, and Rodney swallows it all down, grateful for the yeast flavor that coats his tongue.

After a minute, Sheppard props himself up on an elbow and says, “Your turn,” and Rodney wants to tell him he doesn’t have to – and he really doesn’t since, yes, Rodney’s cock is firm, but it’s not heavy – but he thinks that might not be the right thing to say and for once, his mouth falls in line with the better portions of his brain. Sheppard’s mouth is hot around his cock and proficient, as if this is just another task, but he’s careful and although under normal circumstances Rodney’s not sure he’d recognize this if it hit him over the head, it feels like there’s something almost loving in his touch.

Sheppard climbs out of bed afterwards and gets him a warm washcloth. John never did that. He always left it to Rodney, uncaring. 

They lie there for a long time. “I should go,” Sheppard says finally. Rodney hums in agreement. 

+++

Rodney learns to look at Sheppard out of the corner of his eye. This way, he sees Sheppard, not John. He tries to forget anything else, and if at night he sometimes catches the scent of pine on his pillow or creeping around the floor of his room, then he just gets up and opens the windows.

+++

Sheppard’s been pushing him all day. They’re on MX2-751, and Rodney can’t do anything right. It’s subtle, though. Sheppard’s not snapping at him, but rather the reverse: he leans back against a rock, arms crossed, and raises an eyebrow when Rodney curses at the sparks flying from the laptop he just fried. He smiles just a little when Rodney finally gives up. 

By this point, Ronon’s pacing impatiently, and even Teyla’s look of calm is a bit worn around the edges. As they dial the wormhole back, Sheppard says, “Well, McKay, I’ll let you explain to Colonel Carter why you wasted an entire day on a dead hunk of metal,” and it’s not what he says so much as the way he says it. There’s a little frisson of energy inside Rodney.

Teyla frowns at him. “You are being unreasonable, John,” and “John” is all Rodney hears, JohnJohnJohn. 

Once through the gate, Sheppard says something to Carter that Rodney doesn’t catch because he’s still caught in his haze of John, and then Sheppard says, “McKay, with me,” and he follows him down the hallway, his heart beating so fast that it just might explode.

Sheppard's fingers are sure and knowing as they strip away Rodney’s clothes. They never linger in any one place, but they touch him everywhere, butterfly fingers crisscrossing his body until Rodney’s half mad with it. He strains to get closer, and Sheppard laughs low in his throat and bites the flesh next to his hipbone. This, this is what Rodney wanted, this is what he was seeking. He stammers out all sorts of unintelligible things, made incoherent by John’s wicked smile and the heady crispness of his skin. 

“I want you to fuck me,” John says to him, and he’s already turning around as he takes off his own clothes. 

“Jesus, yes,” Rodney breathes. Every skin cell, every nerve, every pore of his body is alive and leaping forward, and he strokes John’s ass and has to look at the blue-grey ceiling of John’s bedroom to keep from coming right then and there. As much as he wants to spill through his fingers onto the tanned planes of John’s back, to streak his skin, he wants even more to press into his body once again, to get back to something he knows. It’s not the most comfortable thing, this knowing, but at this point he’ll take anything.

He doesn’t spend much time preparing him but makes sure he’s well slicked with a few fingers, and then he’s pushing in, too slow, too fast, and around him John’s body quivers. Rodney’s trembling too, with want and need and the strain of his muscles. He slides in all the way and pulls out just as slowly, and John’s tremors are becoming stronger, until he’s almost shaking. It’s exactly how Rodney feels, and he pets John’s thigh as if to say, “I know,” or “Me, too,” and he doesn’t really think much of it until he reaches around for John’s cock and finds it entirely soft. 

“John?” he says, and he blinks. “Sheppard?”

Sheppard shakes his head. “Keep going,” and he clenches his muscles around Rodney to keep him inside, which totally, maybe unreasonably but probably not, pisses Rodney off. He pulls all the way out and flips him over to say, “What the fuck is going on here?”

Sheppard stares at Rodney’s flushed cock, but it looks as though he’s not really seeing it. “You need this. You need me to be this” – as if that explains everything, and maybe, maybe to Sheppard, it does, and it’s as though the laws of physics have suddenly turned upside down for all the sense Rodney can make of that. Because, oh god, John was right. Sheppard loves him.

Rodney stares at him, aghast. “I’m not going to rape you,” because, he thinks, he can’t go there again.

Sheppard smacks his arm lightly, and it’s the first normal thing he’s done in what feels like months. What has been months, perhaps. “Don’t be an ass. I want you to do this.”

“But you’re – you’re not – you— How can I?”

Sheppard glances away and then back. “Rodney,” he says. “Sometimes I just don’t, I don’t really feel those urges. I can make my body do whatever, but I don’t have to. But that doesn’t mean I mind whatever you want to do.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “Oh, way to make me feel good, Sheppard.” He pauses. “What do you mean, you don’t get the urge?” 

“I just don’t.” Sheppard sits up and shrugs. “It’s always been that way. And it doesn’t bother me because I know I could, I know that there are ways I could, but I don’t want to be that person. So I’m not,” and Rodney thinks back to John, tear-stained and with a fist up his ass and his cock heavy with need and his eyeballs rolling back with ecstasy, heaving out his words, saying, “I’m a bastard, and Sheppard, your John, he knows it and he’s been terrified of me all his life.” 

Rodney gapes at him. “You would – you would do that? Be – for me?”

Sheppard looks at him, and it’s so true that Rodney has to fight not to double over with the gut-punch of it. “I’d die for you,” he says, completely matter of fact, as if it’s merely another thing one says. “Especially now. I’ve always known you, for years, but you - you’re more yourself now than you’ve ever been. You're not hiding anymore, and that – hey, look at me” – his calloused, slender hands cup Rodney’s face – “that’s a good thing. I don’t care what he told you. I’m not him.” 

“Oh.” Rodney knew that, of course, because Sheppard would die for anyone here on base, but that’s not what he means. It’s not what Rodney would mean if he said it, and he finds himself nodding and going, “Yeah.

“But then why didn’t you say something? Why can’t you ever just say something?” He stares at Sheppard for a long moment. “That’s not everything, is it. God, it never is with you. Maybe you’re not him, but you’re still fucking with me. It’s easier for you to say this now, isn’t it?” It’s an asshole thing to do, but Rodney never claimed not to be one. 

“It’s safer now. Because if I want him and not you, then you’re safe – I’ve created the perfect barrier, and you get to seem all noble and self-sacrificing by offering me your body, but really you’re just playing at being the hero. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the one always stealing from you, the one who’s always taking the step closer while you take two steps back.”

Sheppard’s face has been darkening throughout this speech. Rodney can feel the tension coiling in his body, and the last word’s barely out of his mouth before Sheppard springs forward and straddles him furiously. “You think this is easy, Rodney? Buddy? That this is my perfect world? You know why I didn’t push you harder before, when he was here? Because there was nothing I could offer that he couldn't give you more of.” John stares at him. “What am I supposed to offer you? There are things I can’t give you, not even you. But I know you. You and your grabby hands. You're going to try to mold me anyway into what you want. I’m not the only selfish one here. You’re going to push and push, and you’re right, I won’t become that, not even for you. You don’t get to ask that of me.” 

A falling drop of sweat strikes Rodney’s face. “Don’t ask me to do that,” Sheppard says again, his voice almost pleading before it hardens. “But that doesn’t mean this is the way I want things. It’s just the way they are. Deal, McKay.” His hands are wide on Rodney’s chest, covering his nipples and Rodney can’t help but arch a little under them. 

He twists away. “You’re such a jerk. I mean, who tells someone they love them like this?”

Sheppard glares at him. “You’re no prince yourself,” and Rodney frowns back and tugs the sheet from under Sheppard’s legs, pulls it up over his dick and adds, “So, don’t,” which at this point is a total non sequitur and Sheppard nips the line of his jaw, perhaps to show Rodney he can. 

“Asshole,” Rodney says, and then, “Not that. You know, don’t, the other. Sex. Well, I mean, not that I want you to die for me, or at all for that matter, but that’s not what I was talking about.” 

Maybe it’s better that Sheppard – in any reality – has a mean streak. It might be his, their, saving grace, the thing that keeps him from becoming something he hates for Rodney’s sake. Rodney doesn’t want that, not for anything. He knows what Sheppard's hate leads to. Rodney’s own bitter experience is testimony to that. 

It’s not that Rodney won’t think of it for him, won’t know how good the sex could be, but maybe he’s coming to see that things are what they are and he can’t change that. Because in the long term, ignoring those limits would destroy what really matters. 

Another long clutch of minutes pass, and Rodney turns his head and looks at him. Sheppard looks back, and he’s fighting to hold onto his fierce look against the irony of this, Rodney can tell. Rodney takes a breath and then another, and then he bursts out, “So the sex we had the other day? That was really terrible.” And Sheppard’s startled into laughter – Rodney can see it light up his face – and then Rodney’s laughing too, helplessly, with relief and a bit of mania because nothing Sheppard said is a lie, because he’ll give Rodney everything and nothing, and someday Rodney will learn to live with that. 

“It was,” Sheppard says, and he’s still laughing, and he rolls into Rodney and Rodney wraps his arm around him the way he would a child or a brother, and they stay like that, peaceful. 

This is the truth between them.

+++

A few days later, Sheppard comes to find Rodney on the balcony outside his room. He’s holding a DVD. “Wanna watch a movie?” and Rodney says, “Sure. Ronon’s quarters?” 

“Kunia berry?” Sheppard offers.

“You know that’s poison, right?”

“Relax. I like ‘em.” Sheppard’s body picks up the glinting rays of the setting sun. Rodney suspects he’ll always look at it differently, knowingly, unable to forget. There will always be moments when he wants that body, and Sheppard, too. 

Ten months from now, after Sheppard gets out of the infirmary after a close call on P4X-5Y2, he’ll come to Rodney’s quarters and bare himself before him, because he knows what Rodney needs. He’ll take Rodney’s hand and lay it on his soft cock and pull Rodney to him to press kisses to his collarbone. And Rodney will know that he’s doing the wrong thing because guilt has no expiration date, but he’ll do it anyway, come across Sheppard’s torso and rub it into his skin possessively. 

A year after that, Sheppard will spend a month tormenting Rodney because he might not be that John from another reality, but that doesn’t make him a nice man. Maybe he’ll be frantically trying to hold onto something of his own among all the things Rodney demands of him, and Rodney will know this and demand anyway because he trusts that Sheppard can take care of himself. No one knows Rodney better, but then, that cuts both ways, no matter how much Sheppard tries to hold something back, no matter how much he succeeds. 

He’ll do everything but actually offer himself to Rodney, and behind this they have a history of a hundred private cuts between them, and upon this they will build a future of a thousand more. Nights when Rodney will want him so badly that he’ll be practically sobbing with it even as he crawls into his lap and hates him and lets Sheppard soothe him despite himself. Sometimes Sheppard will laugh at him, and sometimes Rodney’ll fall asleep with his hand cupping Sheppard’s cock and one of Sheppard’s arms heavy around him. Five years from now Rodney will reject him just to test him, to see how far he’ll go, and slice his heart open, and six years from now Sheppard will return the favor because he’s only human, messy. 

Seven years from now it won’t really matter because Rodney will have realized that maybe in all realities there is something binding the person of John Sheppard to him, and that the ones you hurt most are always the ones you care for most, and someday Rodney will say to him, “God, but I love you, too,” and mean it. “I know,” Sheppard will murmur in his ear, his body pressed against Rodney’s back. “You have forever.” His amusement will have a smug quality to it. 

Some of these things will come to pass and maybe some won’t, but Rodney doesn’t know either way right now because none of this has happened yet. Sheppard nods and ushers him along with a hand on the small of his back. As Rodney leaves the balcony, the sea breeze brushes past his face. He can already smell the popcorn cooking, and under that the scent of Sheppard, the bittersweet taste of pine.


End file.
